Every day is Mother's Day

A friend of mine runs a floristry business in France. The other day I asked if he’d had a busy weekend for Mother’s Day. “Oh, no” he replied, “Mother’s Day in France isn’t until early June this year”. It turns out that it’s only the February flowery craziness of Valentine’s Day that is shared across the continents. Meanwhile, here in the UK, we follow a tradition from the Middle Ages when people who had moved away from their homes for work, often children, were allowed to go back to visit their home on the fourth Sunday in Lent. Hence, Mothering Sunday was here in the UK on 19 March this year.  In the US, Mother’s Day is celebrated on the second Sunday in May, dating back to a single family memorial service in the 1900s which kicked off the tradition there. My own Mother died several years ago so I don’t share the day with her like I used. But every day I’m reminded of her in some way, whether that’s by the way I do the washing up, or fold my clothes or maybe do some baking or just by the way I look these days. For those of us lucky enough to have had a loving mother, we don’t need Mother’s Day to prompt our thoughts.