Do you love your mother? Do you even know your mother? On the eve of Mother's Day, Anne Enright asks some awkward questions
My two-year-old son doesn't love me. He is quite clear about this. He is adamant. "Do you love your Mama?" "No." "Do you love your Dada?" "Yes."
No fudging, no fuss. Well, at least we know he's not stupid, I say, knowing that I deserve it for provoking him in the first place. Do you love your Mama? What a question.
It is quite possible, at this stage, that he does not know who his Mama is, or what sort of object she might be. It is possible that he will never know his mother in any realistic way, though the knowledge of her (that is to say, the knowledge of me), has already been built into his bones. It will never leave him. Spooky, isn't it?
Babies grow in the emotional soup of our blood, they taste what we taste, sleep when we dance; they are born with our stuff in their veins.
It takes them a while to get rid of us and become themselves. The baby that opens its eyes for the first time is only confirming what it already knows - there you are - but from the outside! A shift in perspective so radical and beautiful, it must be like looking at the earth for the first time, while standing on the moon.
Knowledge of our mother comes before speech, perhaps even before thought - this is not knowledge as we usually define it. After which, all those years of growing: we know their footsteps without pausing to listen, we know what mood they are in by the sound of the key in the door. We grow by the light of their emotions, and see the world through their words: as filter, protector, translator, mothers remain all around us, like a glow, all our lives.
So, what's your mother like? Although, we know these women better than anyone else, we still find it hard to describe them, or even slightly shocking when we are asked to try. We can say a few things about them, like "chatty" or "extravagant" or "shy", but there is always a point at which we falter. Who is she anyway? This woman in her purple hat or her Hermès headscarf or her baseball cap, blonde or grey or highlighted? There is, after all, only one way to describe her, "She is my mother".
This is why it is always so weird to see mothers out and about, I think. There is a part of us that wants mothers to stay inside - whether inside the house or inside our heads. We need to know this, when we start banging on about what women should or should not do, when they have children. We need to know that we are banging on about something that we find hard to define. The church is right: motherhood is a spiritual state and it is a biological state; it is only coincidentally to do with ordinary things such as personality, or talent, or why you have to spend the rest of your life cleaning up after everyone. Or why the world thinks you've gone soft. Or why your children shout at you when they can't find the other shoe under their bed in the morning.
Motherhood, thank goodness, is only coincidentally about the fact that you are for the rest of your life "to blame".
It pulls your day into a tatter of wiping, distracting, chatting, transporting, (shouting, apologising), it covers you with various bodily fluids and turns your brain into a honeycomb of different tasks and compartments, but all this is easy compared with the way motherhood requires you to stop being a person, in some way. You must become an absolute.
Absolutely loving. Absolutely giving. Absolutely MOTHER!!! So all I have to say is - and I'll only say it once, and I'll say it very low - give me a bunch of daffodils.
The flowers and the card and the breakfast cup of tea are all good for children. The little ritual turns their mother into an object of affection, or even of romance. And it makes their mothers cry, of course.
Because the saddest fact is that we love our children back, absolutely. We love them in a way that is spiritual, and biological, and idiotic, having nothing to do with the world, or with the problem of personality, or with all that tidying up.
I wouldn't have embarked on motherhood at all if it weren't for a phrase used by British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, who says that mothers don't have to be amazing, they just have to be "good enough". So sensible - it was like a balm. If you are "good enough" as a mother, you will steer your children through the storms of separation: the infantile rage, the toddler tantrums and all that adolescent whining (all of which is directed at you), until - pop! - out comes the adult at the other end, a person who looks back at you and sees . . . well, if you think they'll see an actual, real and interesting human being then dream on.
This is not part of the contract; the whole point of it is that children move through these stages of dependency and aversion in order that they become actual, real, and interesting human beings. Not you.
You are somehow beside the point. If you are lucky they will come to love you in an adult as well as in a childish way, but there is no guarantee. There is no doubt that they will love you - they have no choice - but children make poor mirrors, and the mother who only sees herself as reflected in her child's eyes is heading for a world of vainglory and grief.
This is the real mother's sorrow, that we love absolutely a creature that loves us absolutely back, but who can not see us. A mother's love is always tragic. It is always a blessing. And yes, it is the most constant and redeeming source of goodness that our poor world knows.
So, thanks Ma.
And now that it's my turn; I'll have a cup of tea with the daffs, thanks, and a Very Small box of chocolates on the side.
Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, by Anne Enright, is published by Jonathan Cape
A mammy for all seasons
Mothers come in all shapes and sizes. Which class of Irish Mammy is yours?
The Mary McAleese: A high-powered mother who is always hob-nobbing around the world with influential types and thinks nothing of jetting off and leaving you to mind poor Dad. (Cool house for parties though).
Ideal gift: Travel make-up kit
The Dana: Your Mammy is a little bit old fashioned and tends to embarrass you by singing evangelical hymns and waving the Bible around when your wee friends come to call. Loves Brussels sprouts but they repeat on her something terrible.
Ideal gift: Snowdrops and daffodils
The Liz O'Donnell: This Yummiest of Mummies is fancied by all your male mates who like gazing into her gorgeous blue eyes and hearing her talk about her fascinating job around the dinner table. "Is your Mum in?" they say these days, ignoring you completely.
Ideal gift: A paper bag for her lovely head
The Peig: This typical Irish Mammy is a bit of a blasket case who can't stop having children and losing children in suspicious circumstances. You know she means well but you wish she'd stop telling boring stories that nobody understands anyway.
Ideal gift: English lessons
Róisín Ingle