There should have been tissues. There should have been violins at the book launch of Mothers: Memories from Famous Daughters and Sons in the National Museum earlier this week. Everyone there had a heart-warming story about their own mother . . . God Bless her, I love her, there'll never be another, like my mudder.
Tony Gregory, TD for Dublin Central, reminisced: "My mother was probably the closest person to me and probably still is. What she wanted for me was a settled, happy family life as a teacher and I ended up with neither." But, he added, his mother didn't marry until she was nearly 40 years of age - "so there's hope for me yet". With that, he clammed right up. The bachelor politician refused to be drawn further on matters of the heart.
Catherine and Honor FitzGerald, the Knight of Glin's daughters, were there too to celebrate the launch of the book, which will help to raise funds for UNICEF. Their father, Desmond FitzGerald, has written about his mother, Veronica Milner. She was "quite a formidable lady," said Catherine of her grandmother, who died last year. "They sometimes had quite a tempestuous relationship but he doesn't say that in the book."
Honor, with an unblemished, pale complexion, is out in all weathers planting, digging and weeding as a gardener at Glin Castle in Co Limerick. "It's me and Tom Wall," she said. "He's the head gardener and I'm his assistant." Over in another corner, John Lonergan, governor of Mountjoy Prison, a native of Bansha, Co Tipperary, chatted to a neighbour from home, Rosaleen Malone, from Cahir. She was there with her daughter, Niamh Malone, who has organised and co-ordinated the UNICEF Ireland Mothers project over the past two years.
Caroline Sweetman-Stephenson was there with her husband, architect Sam Stephenson and her twin sister, Michele Sweetman. As the wine and the canapes go round, someone decided that this was obviously the first cocktail party for Michele's baby, eight-month-old Ralph Michael Sutton - he gurgled away happily in his mother's arms, to the manner born.
David Norris was wearing a mysterious insignia on his lapel. "I have them convinced in the Senate that I'm a secret agent for the Pope," he said with relish. But his badge merely denoted membership of a select club in Washington for intellectuals and diplomats. As one of the 53 contributors to the book, he said he felt he should also have written about his aunt, Constance Fitzpatrick, who will be 102 shortly, who "moved into the place of" his mother when she died when he was 22 years of age. "Her image blends with my mother," he said.
Broadcaster Jimmy Magee was there with youngest son Mark, an accountant, who claimed to be in "my 30th year". "He is not 30," said his good-humoured father, feeling the years too acutely. On The Town just looked on - it's wiser not to get involved in such family discussions.
Journalist Nell McCafferty was in attendance. Novelist and columnist, Cathy Kelly, was there too, with her mother, Gay Kelly. So, too, was film censor Sheamus Smith, who left Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, as a young man many years ago. Minister Liz O'Donnell's parents came up from Caherdavin in Limerick city - Carmel and John O'Donnell are very proud of their daughter. "Her grandmother always said she had a great little brain," said Carmel O'Donnell.
Another contributor to the book who attended was Jane Clare from Dublin, whose mother, she said, "thought that women were far superior to men". Did she agree? An emphatic "I do".