The mother of all days is almost upon us

Elise Vollweiler is a Motueka-based writer

COLUMN: How’s this for a Mother’s Day home run?

Last Sunday, a buddy messaged our friend group – “Happy Mother’s Day, lovely wahine!”

I stared at my phone, trying to do the sort of logic puzzle that I’m somehow spectacularly bad at.

It was the 7th of May, so did that mean that there was a possibility – that there had somehow been room – for this to already be the second Sunday of the month?

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It is the same sort of simple yet sneaky math that I used to encounter a zillion years ago as a bartender, when I would stare at people’s IDs for way too long, muttering to myself, “So if you’re born on today’s date or earlier, that makes you… 18? No… 17. No… 19?”.

Meanwhile, the customers stood with their hands outstretched, waiting to be handed their driver’s licence and their bourbon and coke.

I flicked my friend an alarmed reply, and she responded that whoops, stand down everyone, false alarm; it is actually next weekend.

However, she’d already drunk from the Mother’s Day cup – breakfast in bed and a lazy session reading her book undisturbed.

The part that delights me most is that she is calling it a double-feature on a technicality and is claiming a do-over this weekend.

“Will give them some feedback so the main event will be even better,” she reports, which is the sort of entitled sass of which I completely approve.

Last year, my partner took the kids away for a couple of hours on Mother’s Day. A lovely card, a cup of tea, and then a brief period where I didn’t need to make any decisions for anyone else – it was a glorious trifecta.

He nailed it, but the kids didn’t quite understand. In fact, my oldest was downright worried about me.

“You go,” he valiantly told the others. “I’ll stay here so that Mum doesn’t get lonely.”

“Mum doesn’t get lonely,” my partner tried to explain, and the children all swivelled to look at me, perplexed and a little aghast.

“Well, I do,” I back-peddled immediately, “but it’s nice to have a bit of headspace so that I can just gather my thoughts.”

It’s the push-and-pull reality of parenting.

We long for time to ourselves, and then miss our children ferociously when we’re away from them.

So that’s what I want for Mother’s Day: to hug my children so tight that I risk absorbing them back into my body, and then enjoy an hour or so when I don’t have to referee their squabbles. With a cup of tea in my hand. Simple desires.