Wendyl Nissen: Mother of an afternoon

This Mother's Day please make a note to yourself to not do what I just did. "Hey kids," went the all-staff email to my family. "I'm writing a column about the funniest things I did to you as a mother, so send in your stories fast, I'm on deadline."

I sat back and sipped my coffee, giggling in anticipation at the hilarious anecdotes which would come pouring in, illustrating on one level what a wacky, fun-loving mother I am - but on a deeper plane, the sensitive, insightful love and caring I showed all of them.

When I met my husband I had two children and he had two, so we got together and had another one, putting ourselves on the path of a blended family challenge involving four children and a new baby.

"Most of them end in disaster," I said to myself as I pondered my wonderful years of mothering. "But ours didn't. One big happy family." I chuckled as I looked out of the window at the sunny afternoon and gave myself a good, fat, metaphorical pat on the back.

I refreshed my email inbox thinking that surely one of them would have come up with something by now. Nothing.

So I wandered down the hall and had a laugh with my husband about what a great mother I was. "Remember how cool I was that time we came home and the kids had a party and trampled all my lavender bushes?" I asked.

"I don't think cool is the word I would use," he replied. "If my memory serves me correctly, you insisted that they get all their friends back to plant new bushes and grounded them for a week."

"Nonsense, darling. I'm sure they offered to do that. Your memory really is dodgy, you poor old thing."

Sensing that there would be little to offer on the plate of wonderful mothering anecdotes to be had down that end of the house, I returned to my computer and refreshed my inbox again.

Ah, one daughter had replied, the one with the cast-iron memory. This should be very entertaining. "Cool, I'll have a think and get back to you," was all she said.

How disappointing that my entertainment factor as a mother was not immediately springing to mind.

She must be busy at work, I reasoned.

I made another coffee and got back to work on my own memories, carefully casting aside the darker moments, such as the time I put my son and his sister in time-out and forgot about them. Half an hour later I discovered them both curled up on the bathroom floor, fast asleep.

Not for me the bad-mother memories. Instead, I indulged in the fishing trip, when my daughter caught her first snapper with her proud mum. The long, sleepless nights of unselfish devotion as I nursed a child through illness. My innate patience and understanding when it came to accepting two more children into my family unit and loving them as if they were my own.

"Wow, this whole blended family thing we've done has really showed me how great a gift my mothering skills have been," I said to my husband, who had made the mistake of wandering into my office.

"Let's just say we learned as we went along, shall we?" he said, cautiously. "There was that time when you sent my kids to their mother's house and wouldn't let them back for a week."

"Nonsense. I wouldn't have done a thing like that - you're just making it up."

I refreshed the inbox again. Thankfully the other daughter had replied.

"Vague memories of some cool dancing," she said. "And coming home drunk once saying: 'And there were all these f**king women ..."'

I had to stop reading as there were rather a lot of four-letter words in that story.

Fortunately, at that very moment my son emailed me.

"Going to the movies was always embarrassing because you're often loud and when you took us to a hairdresser in St Lukes and in front of the whole place asked if they'd cut our hair even though we were riddled with nits."

I noticed a theme. Loud, foul-mouthed and lacking subtlety.

"Never mind," said my husband. "At least they all forgot about that other time."

And if you think I'm writing about that, you're dreaming.

www.wendylsgreengoddess.co.nz