Here’s to mums of all generations

Mother’s Day was never a huge thing in our household growing up; maybe that was a generational thing. But I’m glad Mother’s Day is a big deal now. And I wish we had made more of the day when I was a kid; if any mum deserved to be made a fuss of, it was my mum.

One of my early memories was my mother in front of the class at the country school where Dad was the head teacher, and Mum taught the juniors. My little brother was in a cot at the back of the room.

Mum was only 19 when she got married, and still in her 20s after having three children. She went back to work as soon as she could – in part because her and Dad were young and needed the money but mostly, I think, because she loved teaching.

One of the first things she bought with her pay packet was an automatic washing machine; she often talked about the freedom of being liberated from her old wringer and washtub. I remember being thrilled, too, as it terrified me. Mum was a worrier – one of the many things she worried about was us kids getting an arm caught in the wringer and it being mangled. The worrying never went away. Years later, when the twin towers were felled by a terrorist attack in New York, she phoned to add my name to the list of possible missing because I was overseas at the time (in Spain).

Eventually, Mum worked her way up from junior teacher, to principal of her own school. It wasn’t an easy road for a woman in those days.

After missing out at one country school she was told it was because they needed a man to coach the boys at rugby. So she took a rugby refereeing course.

For all Mum’s worrying, we had huge freedom as kids. Like most country kids, we thought nothing of getting on our bikes at an early age and heading off to see a mate several miles down the road, across a busy road and railway line.

We spent our school holidays running around Cooks beach on the Coromandel, disappearing for hours at a time, wading through the estuary or climbing up Shakespeare Cliff, only returning home when it was dark.

Usually Mum and Dad were ensconced by then with their teacher friends and would be several sherries into a very long night.

As I’ve got older, I’ve realised how lucky we were to have such a privileged childhood.

Just as special was mum’s friendship as us children got older; the sherry was swapped for wine, but the conversations and the laughter would go just as long into the night as those latenight sessions at the beach.

So here’s to all the mothers of her generation. Born in the shadow of the second world war, children of the 40s and 50s, they quietly forged a path for their sons and daughters, just as their mothers, and grandmothers had before them.

And here’s to today’s mothers for doing the same.

I hope there’s someone to make a fuss of you today, because you deserve it.

For all Mum’s worrying, we had huge freedom as kids. Like most country kids, we thought nothing of getting on our bikes at an early age and heading off to see a mate several miles down the road.