The greatest invention of the 20^th century, I provocatively say, was “the good enough mother.” Being a mother is tough, and it makes no sense to aim to the “best mother in the world”: there can be only one, not that we can agree on the measurement. Fleur Adcock (1934), another favourite poet, captures beautifully in this poem the tension in being a mother: you teach your child to be good and kind, knowing well that you have often failed to be both. There’s deception but mostly love and duty.

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
and we are kind to snails.