Her special day

The flowers are beautiful, but mothering is such a drab word - it feels like wet cotton wool in the mouth. Add a letter and it's smothering. Take one away and it's othering.

Interesting that fathering only seems to apply to the act of making a baby, mothering to the prolonged effort of bringing one safely through the obstacle course of childhood and adolescence, into adulthood. Such a heavy burden for one person. Mothering - sounds like carrying lead weights in your pockets.

I probably wouldn't be so down on it, if on this day in 2010 I felt that society had adjusted its expectations of women in any real way following on from the androgynous outpourings of seventies feminists, the dirty, smelly days my aunt spent on Greenham Common. Instead of reinventing itself, this word has retained its milky sourness in the mouth, the moment of inevitable compromise and loss of self, overweening guilt.

You can play at equality in your twenties, drinking cocktails in chrome finished bars with your girlfriends, laughing at the dour suited men. But mothering lies in wait for you - and their dull smirks tell you they know it too. Patriarchy has the last laugh, and it laughs louder these days because it has managed to turn the creative energy of emancipation against us as only the status quo can. Now we have to race with the boys as well as tending the babies. Running with your legs tied, like those dreams where you need to get away but your legs are stuck in treacle.

Don't get me wrong, it's not the children I object to - they're an interesting addition to life. It's the weight of expectations that taking on the mantle involves. So I might just skip past that particular gerund and hope to god that even if a child comes along, I don't need a special day.

Thanks to Marlis1 for the photo (http://www.flickr.com/photos/marialuisa/)