ANOTHER VOICE murray swart Nothing worthwhile is easy

ON SUNDAY morning moms across the country will be treated to breakfast in bed when their children put together the most scrumptious feast that anyone could ever have the misfortune of consuming.

So to all the moms, mas, mommies and mamas who will be going into this weekend’s homestretch pretending to be asleep but actually in a state of fear-induced paralysis, triggered by the mere thought of what your children’s best intentions have done to your kitchen, happy mother’s day. May the love and effort that went into your breakfast mask the taste of burned toast, cold coffee and crunchy eggs.

However, this column isn’t for you. You already have dirty dishes and indigestion to look forward to and remind you of what it takes to raise a person of substance.

This column is for the countless maternal figures, both men and women of all ages, who give their all and will continue to do so as they acquire more worth giving, never knowing the thrill of waking up on some hallmarked Sunday morning to lie to a kid about their artistic mastery of glue and glitter.

This is for the parents who drop everything to fill the galleries of every courtroom in our country, all day, every day, in the hopes of exchanging a few words with their shackled spawn who screwed up again.

This column is for the moms out there who find themselves in circumstances that would have most convinced that they have failed as a parent and still don’t give up on their children.

I firmly believe that everyone should spend at least one voluntary day in a courtroom, as it offers an opportunity to gain an objective perspective of how the law is interpreted, applied and enforced, in a context where the outcome of the judgment has no direct impact on you or a loved one.

Alternatively, your first exposure to the court system would inevitably be among the worst moments of one’s life, where high stress, high emotion and high hopes distort your view of what is right, legal, just and fair.

For many of the “courtroom moms” who find themselves sitting through case after case, postponement after postponement and often enough, scumbag after scumbag, this is not their first exposure to the system.

Insight into crime and punishment is the one thing that their children have awarded them in exchange for all that love and affection ... and the scumbag after next isn’t really a scumbag at all but their beautiful baby who they will love no matter what.

I can’t imagine the suffering that these mothers endure, especially considering the stigma that comes with raising a convicted criminal.

What I do know is that it is very easy to feel that if a child rapes, robs, murders and mutilates, it is probably the parents that have failed.

In far too many instances, dad does the deed and then ditches, never to be seen again. Mom never had it quite so simple but often enough, they abandon their children in every way but physically.

After her son swore at the media for reporting on yet another one of his dozen-plus pending court cases, the mother of a serial offender once apologised to me for her child’s conduct, assuring me that she didn’t raise him that way. She didn’t want to create the impression that she was a bad mother.

In fact, the moms I see in court are among the good ones. They didn’t raise criminals. They raised children and even in their offspring’s darkest hour they are there to support them.