If - with apologies to Rudyard Kipling

If

If you can find the missing sock and make at once a pair

and remove from the letterbox the Remote ,that's firmly wedged in there

If you can sort out chewing gum that's stuck in Someone's hair

and never once complain that you re knackered and it's not FAIR!

If you can wait for hours and hours and not be tired of waiting

at checkouts, garages, dry cleaners and school run queues

or read about endless celebrities' moans and not give in to hating?

If you can hold down a job somehow juggle childcare too

and bite back violent urge to swear, when a sock dyes everything blue,

If you can even summon humour ,when your house looks like a zoo

and find inner tranquility listening to Steve Wright on Radio 2.

If you can avoid a ticket when dropping kids to school

and bake cakes or write

lists while taking a conference call

and keep your professional cool?

If you know all the Pokemon rules and "get" Twitter? Blogs and Facebook?

Or you turn a blind eye in the kitchen, when The Yoof decide to cook

or understand she's got "Nothing to Wear" to comply with the latest look

or you stay up typing Year 9 projects, to get your offspring off the hook!

Do you serve your turn long after they are gone

when all wiser folk have left

and you are running completely on caffeine and by your toenails clinging on?

If you would travel to Mars for a friend, just to make them smile

or manage to hold back a grimace when you face the laundry pile?

if you can think of Higher Things while cleaning up something vile?

And never expect a word of thanks when you have gone the extra mile!

if you can fill the unforgiving minute

with sixty seconds' worth of distance run

and on your shoulders carry a world debt of worries

You must be a Woman, dear friend and - A Mum.