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Mother's Day today, but when will it be Father's Day? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
If I was a big company I would have sent out an email in advance to warn people who might find talk of Mother's Day difficult that they could opt out of my emails. But given that the email doing that would also remind the recipient about Mother's Day then I don't see that would solve very much. It would just be like saying "We know you might find people talking about Mother's Day difficult, so we decided to send you an email early doing exactly that, to prolong the pain."
I hope that me starting the blog with a clear indication of the subject matter would be enough to make anyone not interested in that subject to look away. Because I assume (perhaps wrongly) that my readers are not fucking idiots.
My own mum is the most amazing woman: clever, strong and funny and incredibly patient with her ridiculous youngest son, who she must have thought would one day grow out of his childishness, but still seems to love him, even though he never did.
I was annoying child. I know that because I have been given a clone of myself to look after now and he's a nightmare. But my mum lost her temper with me so rarely that I have a memory of the one time it happened. I don't know what I did, but something irritating, because my mum lost it for a moment and shouted at me to shut up. I was so shocked that I cried and she immediately relented and hugged me and told me she loved me.
I was 28 years old at the time.
The fact that only happened once is astonishing.
Sadly I couldn't see mum today, but went out for lunch to celebrate the mother of my kids and the mother of the mother of my kids and also Catie's cousin who was there with her partner and young son. Catie's brother and his partner were there too and obviously me and the kids. We had a big table at the end of the restaurant. The place was full of people celebrating mums. If you don't like mums or thinking about them, don't go out for lunch on Mother's Day.
It was a lovely couple of hours of eating and chatting, with a load of people that I would never have met (or would never have existed) if I hadn't fallen in love with my wife. That's a real luck of the draw thing isn't it? The random people who come along with the person you form a relationship with. My wife, poor woman, ended up with my insane family (though to be fair, I was a pretty good advertisement for what the rest of them would be like) and I am fortunate enough to now be a part of hers (and I am not saying that just because I know her parents read this blog).
They are not without their flaws (unlike me) but I think it's unlikely we'd ever have had lunch together if I hadn't met their daughter. Now we do it all the time. Weird isn't it? I am lucky to have ended up with this bunch. Whilst it's possible I might have had better in-laws (and arguable that they might have had a better son-in-law), it's a lot more likely that I would have had much worse. In an ideal world Michael Palin would be my dad and I would have married into a family who lived in a huge mansion and had lots of money and then they all died leaving it to my me (and my wife, who then also died and then I married Catie, but now we were rich. Almost like I'd murdered them all).
You can't have everything.
There are a million reasons why I don't want to leave my wife: primarily because she's amazing and I love her and our kids and incredibly they all seem to like me (maybe less of the time than I like them, but it's still OK) they all make me happier than I have ever been.
My wife's only flaw is that she doesn't always find me hilarious. Which some might argue is a flaw in me. But come on. Are you even reading this blog?
I don't think I could ever be in another relationship in the unlikely event that Catie dies before me, or the more likely event that the love enchantment I placed on her in 2008 finally wears off.
Mainly no woman could ever live up to her and I will love her til I die anyway, but also what if any new partner's family was a fucking nightmare? Or even if they're just ok. You'd have to learn about all the relationships, all the quirks and traditions, do all the things that they like to do. Jesus it would be awful. A new load of random strangers in your life that you have no power to change or escape. Sends a shiver down your spine doesn't it.
I don't think enough people who get divorced consider this. I'm not saying that you should stay in a terrible relationship just in case you end up with worse in-laws. But I'm not NOT saying that.
