Precious Gifts

Over the eleven years that I have been a Mummy, Mark has been notoriously bad at supervising the gift buying for Mothers Day on our son’s behalf. Though he does spectacularly well on birthdays and at Christmas, for a reason I have never been able to fathom, Mothers Day holds no weight with him and gifts are normally no more than a token gesture. In fact last year he bought me a garden gnome stuffed with flowers and in matters of bad taste I usually find that I simply have no words.
This year I do believe my entire family worried that what would be a difficult Mothering Sunday altogether might just be exasperated by another garden gnome and so on Sunday morning my sister Helen took Finley out and together they chose a darling collection of little somethings for me, including the book above, Nourish, a gorgeous collaboration between Sadie Frost, Amber Rose and Holly Davidson and 642 Things to Write About, which will hopefully kick start my ability to write something meaningful all over again. Helen who knows me inside out and summed up in two books exactly what I need to keep on keeping on. Helen who has a heart full of her own pain and still worries so very much about mine
But Mark is above all else a good man. Despite everything he remains my best friend and my whole family appreciates and respects our relationship to such a degree that he was one of the the bearers carrying Mum’s coffin into the crematorium. He is scatty and a little bit bonkers but he recognises what matters and on Sunday arrived bearing a flower sprinkled gift bag. Inside there was a bottle of Prosecco, chocolates, socks, yellow tulips and right at the bottom of the box a little jewellery box with a silver locket in which to put a photograph of my Mum into and carry her close to my heart for always.
When he gets it right, he gets it so very, very right. What a gift it is to still have his friendship after all these years. What a gift family, and those who become our family, really are.