Second only to ‘Is it lady time, sugar t*ts?’, ‘You’re turning into your mother’, trips so easily off my husband’s unwitting tongue. Even when he knows he’s beyond ‘pushing it’ this phrase still makes it into his ‘say it now pay for it later’ Tourettes top ten.

Mums. Totally underrated.

Sometimes it’s a quip or a tease. Sometimes it’s almost a reprimand, a slap on the wrist, don’t do it again. But why is it such a loaded statement?

Because, the thing is, while we may think becoming our mothers or fathers is the scariest thing since crow’s feet, bingo wings or the Child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, I’m actually beginning to think it’d be bl**dy marvellous to end up half the woman I now see (through spectacles covered in porridge and banana) as my wonderful Mum and Thomas’s Nanna. And similarly my Dad.

Don’t get me wrong, there are things about my Mum’s makeup that I’d like to avoid repeating: obsessive use of bag clips, compulsive hoarding, doing a steak in the oven…but I’m talking minatiae.

Becoming Mum

So if I am becoming her, I can’t help but think it is only a good thing. Here are the things I’d like to thank my Mum for and that I’d like to think I’ll carry on.

BELIEVING IN ME

My Mum sang my praises even if my picture of a mermaid looked like Free Willy had got out again. And I too brandish anything Thomas ‘makes’  with sheer glee – ‘look – 3 colours he’s used here,’ I say, while my husband just gives me the Jesus wept’ look. But isn’t it better this way than the other? After all, if your Mum isn’t going to be the one to think you sh*t rainbows who is?

HEAVENS BATHROOM, THOMAS. THIS IS LIKE THE SISTINE CHAPEL! HAVE A CHOCOLATE BUTTON. OH MY GOD, HAVE TEN!

MAKING ME BELIEVE IN ME

When I wanted to do something but I wasn’t sure I could she’d keep saying ‘you can do that’ until I  did. Granted, sometimes she had to be there at  the end of said project to pick up the pieces  (auditioning for Annie, circa 1984), but she  made me think to try. Anything.

CLEANING UP ALL MY SH*T

This one goes  without saying – I have a 21 month old and a 3 year old. 35 years  on she still does my ironing and washes the  pots for me whenever she can. Not to mention the metaphorical sh*t storms she’s cleared up for me.

TAKING ALL THE OTHER SH*T ON

Teenage hormones, Kevin the teenager strops when I came home form Uni and thought I was a ‘woman’, the fact that, during the noughties, most times I went out I came home without my phone or any recollection of where I’d been.

Kevin the teenager (or me, in my Uni days)

LETTING ME MAKE MY OWN MISTAKES

The amount of times I go to show Thomas the way a toy or project ‘should be done’ when actually, it doesn’t matter – he is happy sticking the lego cow through the hole where the orange triangle should go, and learning in his own way.  My parents let me make the mistakes I wanted to. When I told them I was switchingback to English Lit from Sociology after already switching from it at Uni, they noticeably winced but carried on eating their chicken dinners. I love them so much for that.

MAKING ME APPRECIATE THE VALUE OF MONEY

Making me appreciate the value of money, and similarly, thoughtfulness. As an only child I always tell people I was spoilt. Not with money, but with love. I was the apple of everyone’s eye, the centre of attention, my Mum and Dad’s world. But with money, I was taught value and appreciation. One of my most valued things in adult life is that I’ve been taught to love a gift more for the thought that goes into it than how much it cost. My favourite presents as a child were the swing my Dad made me with left over rope and drain pipes and a netball ring he made me from an old net shopper bag and another drain pipe. And I’ll be making sure Thomas grows up the same – maybe minus the drainpipes, but always knowing the value of a gift given.

MAKING ME KIND

My Mum always looked after other people and taught me to do the same. Thomas doesn’t have to volunteer at a soup kitchen but I want him to remember to give what he can when he can and to realise how enjoyable it can be to help people around him.

GIVING ME COURAGE

I don’t mean she gave me a sword and a steed and sent me off into battle, but she taught me to wok hard, stick at life and not let life’s challenges wear me down. My Mum did a job she hated for many years because she had to. I never realised it at the time, it’s only looking back that I see how much courage she had to have – day to day courage – the most impressive kind.

FINALLY…

No, I’m not afraid I’m becoming my Mum any more. Because, in forty years from now, as I tear about the nursing home with my zimmer frame moaning about the standard of the meals, the lack of gin, and the temperature of the bath water, if my son thinks anywhere near as highly of his Mum and Dad as I do, I’ll have a bl**dy massive grin on my face as I do so.

* original Keving the Teenager image from Youtube