It's Mother's Day this fortnight. Do your mother the honour of sharing her life.

I phoned my mother this morning. To talk. It wouldn't have been possible a few years ago. Back then, I thought of myself as my father's daughter, and my brother as my mother's well-beloved son. He remains well beloved, but now we discuss him - and everything under the sun. We talk, gossip and laugh. Once I married and moved out of her house, my mother suddenly became approachable. We discussed how she should handle my father, and how I should not behave with my new husband and in-laws. She offered advice on my son's teething problems, and they were suggestions, not stone tablets handed down from heaven to be followed or else. I was suddenly seen as capable of offering counsel on some aspects of life. I had grown up - and at the risk of inviting another 'discussion', I'd say she had too.

When I realised my mother was human, I realised I could drop my defences. Like modern-day Shylocks, we could bleed, feel, hurt, rejoice with each other. We could share our lives.

And yet, for us to have reached this far, something intrinsic had happened. We had moved to a higher realm of voluntary adult involvement in each other's lives, but in doing so we had broken our original agreement - of her as sole provider of my needs, judge and jury of my actions, and I as receiver of her largesse, and subject to her statutes.