After railing about grammar in my last post, you might wonder whether it should be Mother’s Day or Mothers’ Day. Or maybe you don’t wonder about it.

To be candidly truthful, I wasn’t sure myself. So, not relishing a logomachy, I wondered, even if you don’t, if I could discover what other logophiles had to say about the apostrophe in question.

I discovered that Mother’s Day originated in the United States of America in 1908, when Anna Reeves Jarvis held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew’s Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia. In 1908, the US Congress failed to pass a law making the second Sunday in May Mother’s Day. In 1912, Anna Jarvis trademarked Second Sunday in May and Mother’s Day and, after several states made the second Sunday in May a Mother’s Day holiday, in 1914 Woodrow Wilson had Mother’s Day made a national holiday.

Wikipedia says, “Although Jarvis was successful in founding Mother’s Day, she became resentful of the commercialization of the holiday. By the early 1920s, Hallmark Cards and other companies had started selling Mother’s Day cards. Jarvis believed that the companies had misinterpreted and exploited the idea of Mother’s Day, and that the emphasis of the holiday was [intended to be Jarvis meant – Ed] on sentiment, not profit. As a result, she organized boycotts of Mother’s Day, and threatened to issue law suits against the companies involved. Jarvis argued that people should appreciate and honour their mothers through handwritten letters expressing their love and gratitude, instead of buying gifts and pre-made cards.”

So, Mother’s Day it is.

I wish I had been more appreciative of my mother’s muliebrity. I was too young to appreciate what sacrifices she made during the war-time rationing, although I did know that she did give up eating something she knew I would like or of which there was not enough for two people.  She was loving, always there for me when I had a fall, or I’d driven an axe into my leg, or, as happened once, an evacuee from London picked up a 2 x 4 and hit me over the head with it, causing the centre of my scalp to stream blood until I had cycled a mile home. Fortunately, no severe damage was done except that it rattled what brain I had around in my head. Not being able to think well caused me to have five kids – at least, that’s my story.

My Mum (or Mummy, but always with a capital M, for she was special) was always there to help others, taking in friends for a weekend or a week or so in our rented house which Dad had found for us well away from the city, to give them some relief from the blitz going on in Southampton, our (and their) home town.

And could she sing! She had a wonderful soprano voice, which, had it been trained, could have taken her onto the concert stage. As it was, she sang beautifully, whether it was at one of our many parties (strictly tea-total, mind you) in our house or in a neighbour’s house in Southampton before and after the war, or at church. People loved to hear her sing accompanied by my Dad, who was a brilliant pianist and likewise could have taken up a concert career instead of teaching.

Mum had a great, if somewhat quirky, or even a slight shade of blue, sense of humour (the blue never being exposed when Dad was around) and I well remember walking along one of our country roads when a convoy of American army trucks passed us and the wolf-whistles the troops made at her made her laugh and laugh. I felt very proud of my Mum. It was only in later life after the war that middle age took its usual toll on shapeliness, as it does to many of us. Photos of Mummy before the war at a beach with Dad and me show a good figure. Oh, is that being chauvinistic?

S-o-o-o-o….

…..what did I do for the mother in this house, My Beloved, who had raised five children?

No, I did not provide breakfast in bed – she would not have appreciated it.
No, I did not provide lunch for her, but I did let her nap –
and then watch tennis all afternoon.
While I also had a nap and then started prepping dinner for her.

Appetiser: Sizzling Tequila Lime Shrimp

This was three large prawns sautéed in butter with grated ginger and garlic. When done, I added the Tequila and flambéed them. When the flame had died down, lime zest and juice were added.

We did not sit at the table: I presented My Beloved with her plate as she sat comfortably in her lazyboy-style chair watching the end of the tennis.

When we had savoured and relished the shrimp and the tennis had finished, I moved back to the kitchen and finished off the main course: Bacon-wrapped chicken stuffed with guacamole. In other words, tender chicken breast which had the heck malloted (newly coined word meaning the breast was smashed thin with a mallot) out of it, rolled up with creamy guacamole and wrapped in bacon that’s grilled until the bacon is nice and crispy! It was declared a success by the one who mattered – actually “matters” always, every day, every minute!

Accompanying this were grilled asparagus and balsamic soy garlic roasted shrooms. While the asparagus was as one might expect – roasted – they were very thin. My options on buying them were limited: thin, or thin. However, the shrooms were a true success, delivering a sweet and deep flavour such as we had never had with any vegetable before. We will do those again. Soon!

All of this was accompanied with my own Merlot. Several glasses.

Dessert was very simple: vanilla ice cream and coconut chocolate ice cream.

And with some or all of those delicious flavours lingering on my and your pallet,
I bid you and Mother’s Day adieu!