Mother’s Day used to smell like the Maillard reaction. Thousands of sugars bumping into thousands of proteins, turning bread into burned toast.
I could smell it from the bedroom I shared with mylittle sister. Shortly, she would switch on the jug and then carefully pour boiling water on to a teabag. Spread marmite on the toast and add milk to the tea. And then she would come and fetch me, I would pay her 50 cents and we would proudly present the breakfast in bed “we” had made.
My husband’s family don’t indulge. “Mum doesn’t believe in it,” he explains. “She’d think it was weird if I started doing something now.” This is one of the greatest lies he consistently tells himself.
Greatest Mother’s Day gift ever?
I crowdsourced the question and my friends filled a WhatsApp chat with images of hand-made tissue paper flowers and hand-written cards. Stalky, felt-penned letters wished them the greatest day ever and proclaimed, “Even though you’re [redacted], you look 30!”
“Windchimes the kids made for me. They were blocks of wood banging in the breeze. So f***ing annoying. I had to pretend they were broken after a week or two.”
“African violets. The most dried-up, unsexual flower in the world.”
“I know a mother of two boys whose husband bought her a book on how to be a better mother to sons.”
They are aware they are the lucky ones. For people who can’t-don’t-won’t have children, this is a difficult day. For people who can’t-don’t-won’t have a mother, this is a difficult day. A couple of decades ago, this column might have been a silly rant about the commodification of love. I like that in 2024 it comes with a paragraph reminding us there are lives that will never fit the confines of a seasonal gift guide. (I have a mother. If she is reading this, she will be unsurprised to learn she is not receiving a Gucci jacquard knit scarf with tassels or a Jo Malone London Sunlit Cherimoya 50ml cologne.)
The safest gifts, of course, come pre-approved. A friend’s son is giving her the heated slippers she purchased herself with a control-freakishly wilful disregard for the novelty sock market.
In which the writer presents a more realistic imagining of a Mother's Day breakfast. Photo / Kim Knight
Personally, I like to tick a box that says “renew”. Magazines. Wordle + Spelling Bee.Herald Premium. Who doesn’t love a subscription with their morning cuppa?
I’m not sure exactly when Mother’s Day moved from breakfast in bed to brunch on Ponsonby Rd, but this is largely irrelevant because two eggs and a hashbrown no longer say “I love you”. To comprehensively win the modern Mother’s Day, you must book a four-course Sunday lunch with champagne extras. Pros: You can sleep in. Cons: You will not be able to afford next week’s rent.
Last week, my inbox overflowed with emails from restaurants offering lavish lunch specials. The latest “treat your mum” missive literally arrived as I was typing this sentence. It included a parmesan wheel pasta station, unlimited plates of prawns, mussels and smoked salmon and a five-tier chocolate fountain. I love my mum, but this is not our wedding.
My favourite email smoothed the definitive edge off the semiotically loaded day by inviting customers to “celebrate the mothering types”. My least favourite suggested I pay for lunch AND a night in a hotel. (I love you - now don’t come home?)
Many menu spreadsheets and checklists later I concluded that, this year, the way to a mother’s heart is through a chicken liver. If your children are taking you out for a four-course lunch on May 12, there is a high chance of paté. If you are very lucky, it will come with something that smells a bit like burned toast.
Kim Knight is an award-winning lifestyle journalist and former newspaper magazine editor who joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016.
