Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. When I was at school, we were all big supporters of this Feast because we got a day off school. Now that I'm not at school, December 8th always makes me think of my mother. This is not because she was a supporter of the idea of Immaculate Conception but because of the gentle irony in her voice as she explained to me that, in their wisdom, the men responsible for allocating such feasts had decided to put Immaculate Conception and Mary's birthday exactly 9 months apart. Same with the Annunciation and Christmas. (By the way, with that Ancestral Teaching Tradition behind me, I can't resist the opportunity to correct a commonly-held belief. Immaculate Conception doesn't refer to Jesus's conception but to Mary's.)
But for all of that, perhaps December 8th can and should be a day to celebrate motherhood. So I'd like to celebrate my mother - and this picture is one of my favourites of the two of us together. I think it illustrates the fact that, no matter how old you are, your mother never stops mothering you - in the best sense of the word.
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