Earn Her Forgiveness

Come clean this Mother’s Day. You scoundrel.

Remember when you destroyed the kitchen in a science experiment in the 70s and blamed it on the cat? Or when you broke 6 neighbourhood windows in one afternoon of garden cricket and the kids next door ran away? Or that time in high school when you stole mom’s car to go to a dance party and played dumb about the dent in the rear bumper?

All over the world, mothers blame their children for every grey hair and wrinkle. As they rightly should! Their knees are scuffed and bruised from praying for your safety (and cleaning up after you). Of all your siblings, you’re probably the one responsible for most of those. Yes, you.

Yet, she loved you unconditionally. Even if the paplepel(wooden spoon) had to convince you of that love ever so often, you still probably got away with about half of all the mischief you were up to. Not because you were so clever, but because she let you. She chose her battles wisely.

We had an economist calculate the debt of the average adult South African to their moms. Taking inflation, compound interest and compensation for pain and suffering into consideration, the average adult South African will have to work approximately 211 and a half years to repay their dues to their mothers.

Long story short: You’re pretty much stuffed.

Luckily, mothers rarely, if ever, feel the need to collect on that debt. Phew. Still, you should feel pretty terrible about it. Sies. To assist you in some measure of redemption, here’s a list of things you should do. Some are for Mother’s Day. Some are NOT JUST for Mother’s Day:

1. Phone her. Often. No, WhatsApp and SMS does not count, she wants to hear your voice.
2. Send her flowers. Often, and out of the blue.
3. Take her to a restaurant / coffee shop / theatre show. Have a conversation where she speaks and you listen. You might learn something.
4. Go help out at her house. She can’t reach everything or do everything anymore.
5. Frame photos of the grand children and give it to her. She likes their faces a lot more than she does yours (although she’s secretly very proud of your parenting).
6. Thank her for being your mom.
7. This year, you could augment you being a good child with a special promotional Mother’s Day gift from Déonne le Roux Jewellers in Woodlands Boulevard and Kolonnade Shopping Centre. Click here to see the special gifts.