You Are What You Wear!

You Are What You Wear!

Today my beautiful one year old is dressed in second hand clothes….nothing unusual about that. I love getting a big bag of old clothes from my friends with older kids and also re-discovering my elder son’s clothes up out of the cellar. Each little cute top a memory and perfect re-cycling.

Today however, the baby is wearing a top that proclaims,’ My Mummy is Yummy!’ Obviously I would never buy this top myself it’s something you buy for one of your girlfriends kids. (It’s a well known fact that all women – sometimes mistakenly (though definitely not in my case!) think that their  friends are all gorgeous!) Even the gorgeous friend whose son it originally was I expect given it.

 My partner did buy me a badge one Mother’s Day that said ‘yummy, mummy’ in a funky little font. That was it! No flowers, chocolates, perfume, jewellery –just the 50p badge, as all of you who have pushed out a baby know a real present is absolutely necessary, every year!……(especially if he expects a lie in and a beer on father’s day!) Anyway that disappointment aside…..

I admit to somewhat discretely zipping up the little one’s coat as I crept round the supermarket make up free and wearing lycra leggings (nearly 40 and definitely without the shape for them) when I spotted a suited, serious looking man in glasses with a clipboard,

’ Erm excuse me madam, my name is Horace Jenkins , Chief Inspector, Trading Standards, South Manchester…….Is that YOUR son?!’

‘My Mummy is Yummy’ blazoned across his cuddly chest, big unsuspecting smile on his face!

Of course my mind was working overtime and fortunately he was only trying to get me to change my gas supplier!

I do think I may over think things a little. I remember standing in a card shop liking the card that said ‘World’s Best Mother’ but choosing another for my poor long suffering mum because I was sure there probably were better more self sacrificing mums in the world…. And actually I really thought she’d handled a few things in a way that wouldn’t even put her in the top 100!

I however in one of the now famous rages of my teenage years threw back at my dad a glass award he had engraved himself and fitted into a block of hand polished wood that said, ‘World’s Best Daughter – Donna Rankine’

A few years later I found it again, pieces collected and painstaking glued back together…..the shame and guilt overwhelming.

It is an amazing thing to be on the end of unconditional love.

I don’t expect to find myself on the ‘Best of’ list let alone, ‘World’s Greatest’ ever again…….