Body blows of love

THE request is modest: a Mother's Day sleep party. "Can I come too?" bouncy little Ollie asks.

THE request is modest: a Mother's Day sleep party. "Can I come too?" bouncy little Ollie asks. Gently I explain that a sleep party involves me, a bed and no one else - for a very long time.

Cue anguish, tears, bewilderment. Mummy all by herself? At a party he's not invited to? And he's the one who sleeps jammed up against me whenever he can, limpet-stuck, as if this is the only way he can sleep, as if he'll never let me go.

But he must at some point, of course, and how I dread that; dread it with all of them. Yet mothers, of course, let go too, some so viciously it's like a piece of ragged tin dragging through the heart. I've seen parents and children living in horror of each other's potency, of the hurt, each side knowing the other's Achilles heel too well. Seen women who haven't spoken to mothers for years even as grandchildren have arrived; heard of mother-daughter counselling instigated in utter despair; of a mother declaring to her daughter that if she had her time over she'd never have children; seen friends who've cried all the way home in the car after visiting mothers because the verbal crushing has never ceased. "If he had learned anything it was that family was not so much what you were given as what you were able to maintain," novelist Anthony Doerr wrote. Sometimes, yes, it's just too hard. Yet think of the urgency in W.H. Auden's plea, "we must love one another or die", for with those great, felling familial silences - surely the bitterest rifts of all - can come a sapping of the spirit, a corrosive bewilderment, a heaviness that's carried through life. You can't be hurt by someone you don't care about.

What I've learnt: the greatest chasm between two people is love withheld by a parent. If you want to do the most damage, try messing with that most primal of human bonds. If you want a miraculous healing, try the opposite. Love withheld, as a weapon, can lock up a life; leach confidence, esteem, strength. And wounds can freshen in middle age. A few years ago I was swamped by a great welling of grief from pre-teen years when my parents split and my father remarried soon after. I thought at the time I'd coped fine, but the fault lines ran deep. In middle age I felt suddenly, inexplicably, raw, deeply vulnerable, grieving. What was this unbearable freshness within me? It was finally cauterized by facing it square on. Asking questions. Needing responses. Accepting that no one is perfect, least of all myself. With that came release into a joy that was like sparks flying off an anvil.

As a mother myself I now know what an extraordinarily difficult task it is to be a parent or step-parent. No mother is perfect, no child. As parents we must use our power wisely, generously, with restraint and empathy and compassion. Sometimes it's bloody hard. Sometimes I feel more childish, less restrained than my kids; that they're better people than me. Motherhood is all-consuming; a condition of giving, continually. The love is voluminous, extravagant, greedy; it varnishes with light, it dulls; has me dancing around the room with exhilaration then curled exhausted on the ground, fists pressed at thudding temples, lost. No matter how much love mothers have to give we're sometimes screaming inside for alone, peace, space. To unfurl, to replenish.

That's why, before I take my own beloved mum to lunch this weekend, I'm hoping for a sleep party. It won't last for long, the tribe will all come gleefully tumbling in (hopefully not before 10am), then I'll gather the small, bright wonder of them close and breathe them in deep. And when they leave in adulthood this giggle palace of a house will wait for them, its breath held, as I, too, will wait. For the gift of their attention. For their understanding love. Despite all the faults.

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