What to Wear on Mothering Sunday

Over the years I have worn some strange things on Mothering Sunday.  For example, a necklace made of wooden beads from a car seat cover, interspersed with gold plastic buttons and threaded on a long orange bootlace.  Many mothers on Tyneside wore a similar necklace on Mothering Sunday, 1995.  I doubt many of us have worn them since.

My sons are now 20 and 18, and have observed their father closely over the years and learnt that flowers, cards, and special meals are what mothers really like (even though Mum swore blind at the time that the car seat necklace was the most beautiful piece of jewellery in the world and she would keep it forever).  This means that I am free to choose my own outfit and accessories on Mothering Sunday these days.

So: what to wear on Mothering Sunday?  Well, help is on hand from the liturgical calendar if you move in cathedral circles.  Mothering Sunday is also Laetare Sunday, or Refreshment Sunday, the Sunday midway through Lent on which we traditionally lighten our penitential burden.  Lenten purple is softened to rose.  This is only in more rarefied high church circles, you understand.  The kind of place where you have to suck boiled sweets during the mass so your ears don't pop.  I looked on Google images at rose vestments, and there plenty of gorgeous examples, any one of which I'd gladly use to upholster a small ottoman in my new deanery.

Obviously, I am too lay and too low to be prancing about in rose vestments, but I did wear pink.  Pink socks with brown mid-heeled shoes.  I've seen young people doing the sock and heeled shoe thing, so I think we're OK with this, aren't we?  I also had on my high-waisted wide leg 70s style jeans (hence the need for heels), a pink vest top and a pistachio V-necked sweater, the one that so nearly got taken to the charity shop before I knew pastels were big this season.  Over this I wore my big pink cardy-coat.  I spotted several other people in pink in Lichfield cathedral today.  Possibly just coincidence, but it did look rather nice.  Clashed hideously with the little bunches of daffodils that were given out, mind you.