Mother's Day 2013. Can you keep a secret?

Here's the thing. I made some truly spectacular mistakes in my day and each time I thought I'd die from embarrassment or shame and then I didn't, die that is, but was left with a terrible memory of what felt like failure. For example....

The last time I was a candidate in a Federal Election, I said yes to a debate that I should never have said yes to. The room was full of the opposition and I was booed out the door. The paper ridiculed me on its front page. I felt embarrassed and obsessed for at least a month but I did not give up! Repeat; I did not give up.

Another time, a community group I belonged to lost a very big funding cheque (that's funding not 'f#@*ing') which I'd forgotten they'd given to me for safe keeping and possibly banking and I swore I'd never seen it and found it years later in a file in the back room. Oh, that's where that went! It hadn't been cashed and another had been written but I couldn't believe I had made such a mammoth mistake and walked around in stunned silence for days.

I was a hopeless bookkeeper so our accountant banned me from helping with the nightly tally for our family business because I accidentally made a $100,000 mistake. He said that if he didn't know better it could look like I was doing something illegal.

When we lived in Winslow, a small country community 17 km north of Warrnambool, I belonged to a kindergarten driving pool. One lunch time, on my way to do the pick up from kinder I was running a wee bit late so I stepped on the gas. Being the secretary of the kinder I knew how annoyed that teacher was when parents were late and in this case it would mean five extra kids eating into her lunch hour.

On the outskirts of Warrnambool the speed limit was 60 kph, which I felt was a little unreasonable when it was still more or less an open highway with paddocks on either side and so I stepped up a few kph s. Suddenly there was the sound of a siren and I was pulled over. I wound the window down thinking the policeman would understand that I was late for the kinder run. 'Is it an emergency?" he asked. 'Yes.' I said. 'I'm late for the kinder run.' and he gave me that 'I don't think so' look and told me I had been doing 90 kph in a 60 kph zone which meant an immediate withdrawal of my licence for 6 weeks! I could drive the kiddies home but that was it. And we lived 17km out of town! The teacher, my husband and the car pool mums were literally going to kill me.

And then there was the day I forgot to pick up my daughter from school. I was at a friends and lost track of the time. My poor little, lonely daughter was sitting on a chair in the hall and if looks could kill I'd be dead.

But that's not all. I'd forgotten that James my son, who was in prep, was going with the school down to the Blue Hole for a fishing expedition. I was supposed to pick him up early at 2.30 pm but forgot and was surprised when I answered the front door and there was James with his kindly teacher who for my punishment, thank you very much,  handed me a bucket of water in which flip flopped a great big live bream.

James wanted to keep it as a pet and take it to bed with him. David was away on one of his many business trips, so I had to ask a friendly neighbour to kill and clean it. Having managed to prize the large fish head away from James's tight little fisted hands at bed time as he screamed into my face (which I felt it was just punishment for my crime), we kept it in the freezer for him to admire at his leisure (every two minutes) and also to show it to his Dad hopefully without the dead fish odour. (On second thoughts, I should have left it in the pantry!)

I still have the picture of James, taken by said teacher, proudly holding his very big bream. Thanks teacher. (Oh the shame!) James' photo even made it into a fishing magazine! But for me the day will be forever remembered as the day I left my poor little fisherman sitting on that lonely bridge with his large live flipping fish.

When my daughter Skye was in early secondary school there was a parent teacher interview appointment (one of oh so very many). We had agreed that Skye would meet me in the car park when school was over and we'd go in together. (Not sure why but it seemed like a good idea at the time!)

I waited just outside the front door but she didn't arrive and as I sat there the clouds gathered and it began to hail so I dashed inside. The place was empty so I approached the front desk and asked the secretary if she'd seen Skye. She said that Skye had thought I wasn't coming and (it was before mobile phones) she tried to ring me at home but when there was no answer she had walked home...across town in the weather. She asked me if I knew that my daughter had a cold. I asked her why she hadn't checked the car park or at the very least rung a taxi for her. She answered with a withering scowl (which told me what a dreadful and complete failure of a mother I was) and said 'I am not her mother!'.

Poor Skye. I drove around looking for her and finally found her trudging along our street, her good woolen uniform completely drenched and never quite the same. I was so angry with her for not sticking to our plan but she swears the plan was that I'd meet her inside. Dear God Almighty I felt bad that day!

In the eyes of the world mothers are either sinners or saints and rarely something in between but somewhere in between is actually where, under a mountain of guilt, we all live. Mother's day, with all its corny sweetness, offers us a brief respite from all that guilt and a chance to straighten the halo and soak up some of the glory of the myth of motherhood. And the next day, the routine and mistakes begin again, ad infinitum!

I guess my point is that, though a bit bruised and wounded, I lived  through these and many more mistakes, to finally see the funny side and they did get funnier over time.

And the other point is, many of the mistakes were either worked out or through and became a a whole lot of learning experiences. Mostly, I learnt not to try to do it all myself but rather to delegate (book work, some housework and some babysitting and oh man that's another story).

Last Saturday there was an interview with Noni Hazelhurst in the Age. Noni said that when she was filming Play School in the early days they would tape it all in one hit, mistakes and all. The producers wanted the actors to work through their mistakes on TV for the children to see, in order to model 'problem solving'.

Good old Play School. I knew I loved it for a reason (beside the fact it was a knock out babysitter). And in the end, I guess that's what life is; one long problem solving lesson and probably, in the end, largely what being a mother is all about too.

But the late great President Roosevelt said it much better than I...
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt in "Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910