Mother's Day

Getting the essential jobs out of the way first is key to being able to relax for us, so here's the study with all the furniture and shelves and unpacked boxes (Yes! Still!) moved away from the bathroom walls ready for work to start tomorrow. Now the rest of the day is our own.

It's Mother's Day here in the UK and we've already had the traditional phone call from Mum thanking us for our card. We don't do flowers or chocolates - she's never wanted that kind of thing - but a card with flowery verses is essential, and getting harder to find by the year. Cards get bigger and more expensive, but inside is either simply "Happy Mother's Day" or a short piece of doggerel that anyone could cobble together in 5 minutes, poet or not. That's definitely not what my Mum expects!

I was busy with something when she rang, so Nikki took the call. Mum only got her name wrong twice during the five-minute call, which is pretty good going even for her. Like I said the other day, her short-term memory is shot, but you'd think after six years she'd have got used to it.

The thing that winds me up the most though, is not her memory. It's the fact she will take anyone's advice ahead of mine. Like I'm still 5 years old or something, and I don't know anything about anything. She's very lucky to have good neighbours on either side who do an awful lot for her. Living in the same house, with the same neighbours, for over 40 years opens up the possibility of such long-term friendships and I'm well aware that *I* am lucky too: that she has such good support. Living 70 miles away is not conducive to popping over to take her bin out, wash her car, or make her bed, so it's fortunate indeed that there are people there who will do those things for her.

I say I'm well aware of it. If I hadn't achieved that sense of awareness under my own steam I would still have got there. She tells me every time we visit. Mother's conversations these days are largely made up of stock phrases which are repeated at random intervals, often more than once during the course of a visit. One of these refers to her closest neighbour. We'll call him Patrick. Whenever his name crops up in conversation (which is frequently), it's inevitably followed with "I don't know what I'd do without him, John. I really don't. He's been marvellous."

We call him Saint Patrick, because he can do no wrong.

Take our last visit as a very simple example. The recent high winds blew down Mum's fence and the week before our visit she'd had it replaced. The joiners left large splinters of wood all over the front garden which she asked me to sweep up. Since the front garden is tarmacced much of what I swept up was those little bits of sharp gravel that wear off old tarmac, mixed with the wood splinters and the odd piece of litter. As part of the local recycling scheme Mum has a green bin for garden waste, but I said the sweepings should go in the grey "general household waste" bin because they were (mainly) not biodegradable. She thought they should go in the green bin, because they came out of the garden.

I've had this kind of argument in the past. They inevitably cause pointless upset and go nowhere. I shrugged, bit back my opinions and got on with sweeping. Cue the obligatory phone call to Saint Patrick. He told her the sweepings should go in the grey bin. Instantly we were instructed to change to the grey bin. She even suggested we should take out the shovel full of grit we'd already dumped in the green bin! How exasperated was I? I'm 50 years old, have experience of recycling schemes in three different areas of the country rather than just one not to mention having been recycling glass and metal since long before it became fashionable, but my experience counts for nothing at the side of the omniscient Saint Patrick. *I* say green bin? No, that can't possibly be right. *He* says green bin? That must be the answer! Aaargh!

It's a lesson for me though. A hard one. These are unwinnable arguments but for years I carried on trying to win them. I became angry. She became angry. Nothing changed. She would go ahead and make the mistake I knew she was going to make, or someone else would give her the same advice I had given, and they would be heeded while my words were ignored. And whatever the outcome, our original conversation (or argument) was forgotten by her, but remembered by me, so it was me left with the bitter memories. That's why it's pointless.

Now, whenever I start down that argumentative path, Nikki gives me a look, or puts her hand on my arm and shakes her head. Don't go there. And I don't. It's the road to nowhere.