I remember my mum saying it time and again: ‘I want us to be mates.’ She said it when we were tiny, she said it when we were teenagers. When we were young, being mum’s best friend was The Goal. When my sister came along I was three and a half and I distinctly remember going through the glass doors of the hospital, terrified my mother would have a new ‘favourite’.
I said to her months later, ‘You love L more than me.’ My mother’s horrified reaction, ‘No – I love you both equally!’ was something I logged in my needy little toddler heart. Mum was mine. And then she wasn’t. And then, plot twist, I started to love the person who had stolen my original best friend. I started to think of my sister as more of a best friend than my mother. It is all so gloriously complicated, but I do know this: mothers and daughters are not destined to be simple friends. Mothers and eldest daughters, especially.
Things started to get strained between me and my mum when I was 10 or 11 – old enough to want distance. When I stopped simply needing and adoring her and started, well, judging her. A way to carve out my own identity, perhaps. But also a natural shift in power. I look back now and I see how she kept throwing love into my teenage black hole of disdain: quietly giving me a copy of Have You Started Yet? when I got my first period. Asking me about my boyfriends, even though I’d rather have died than tell her the truth.
She gave me confidence, and she gave me the dream to put that confidence to good use.
Once, she dutifully ate an orange tart I’d made that had huge chunks of rind in it because I read the recipe wrong. And I think she really did enjoy it, because I had made it for her, and she loved me.
She never once told me I couldn’t be a writer, or that I had to choose something sensible. She gave me confidence, and she gave me the dream to put that confidence to good use.
But I resisted Mum’s efforts, and her friendship, even into my early thirties. Just as I’d hated her for being the grown-up who could boss me around, I hated her in later life for what I saw as the childish parts of her. The things I had to forgive and stretch to meet her at. (And I think it was about me fearing the childish parts remaining in myself.)
But, as Carrie Fisher says in Postcards From The Edge, ‘At some point you just say, “Fuck it! I start with me.”’ And when I started really believing that, I was able to become true friends with my mother again.
Now, I appreciate that stretching to meet someone is an opportunity for growth, not judgement. And when you ‘start with you’, you decide the people you put around you, and how. And you start to relax, even in the historical places. It’s still a process. But I believe friendship is at its purest when people are their equivalent selves in each other’s presence. By that, I mean the child in me and the child in my mother get along like a house on fire. She’s a party girl at heart. Happy Mother’s Day, Mum. Thanks for being my oldest playmate, my partner in wine and my trickiest friendship to get right.
Illustration: Chiara Ghigliazza
READ MORE: Friendeavours: Why Every Woman Needs A Platonic Straight Male Friend
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The Best Celebrity Cameos In Friends
1 of 29Janine, aka Elle Macpherson
Joey's Australian dancer roommate who is the real reason we got to witness Ross and Monica perform 'The Routine'.
2 of 29Philip Schofield?!
Phillip Schofield shocked This Morning viewers by admitting he'd been on Friends, well, kinda. He's a superfan of the show, and so he actually went along to a viewing of Friends in the 90s. His laugh can be heard in a scene between Jennifer Aniston's Rachel and Matt Le Blanc's Joey in series three.He said: 'I have actually been on Friends. I've been in an episode of Friends. The one where they keep the scary books in the fridge. When I say I was on Friends... my laugh was on Friends.'
3 of 29Sandy, aka Freddie Prinze Jr.
The male nanny who Ross had an uncomfortable, definitely not okay, problem with.
4 of 29Melissa Warburton, aka Winona Ryder
Remember the big kiss? The one that Rachel apparently had in college with Melissa but no one believes her? That was with Winona.
5 of 29Ben, aka Cole Sprouse
Ross's son with Carol was not in the show anywhere near as frequently as he should have been. But the episode where Rachel teaches him how to pull pranks is gold.
6 of 29Ralph Lauren, aka Ralph Lauren
Kind of makes sense to have the real life fashion person referred to in Rachel's TV world job, played by the real life person.
7 of 29Susie Moss, aka Julia Roberts
Susie stole Chandler's clothes after having him undress in a cubicle in some restaurant toilets as revenge for teasing and pulling up her skirt when they were at school.
8 of 29Officer Goodbody, aka Danny Devito
Phoebe's last minute stripper for her bachelorette party was a fantastic dancer, and I won't hear otherwise.
9 of 29Dr. Michael Mitchell, aka George Clooney
Meet hot doctor number one who somehow finds himself in the middle of Rachel and Monica's identity swap after Monica loses her health insurance.
10 of 29Jamie, aka Helen Hunt
Helen popped up way back in the first season to give Friends a weird cross over into the Mad About You world. She tries to order coffee from Phoebe. It's a bit awks.
11 of 29Cousin Cassie, aka Denise Richards
Ah cousin Cassie Gellar. A relative who comes to stay with Monica but is oogled at a bit too much by Chandler so then goes to stay with Ross and has a weird moment over there too.
12 of 29Andrea Waltham, aka Jennifer Saunders
What a role, eh? Andrea played mother to Emily (Ross's wife who's name he did not say at the alter) and answers the phone to poor pregnant Phoebe who wasn't able to fly to London for the wedding.
13 of 29Tim and Tomas, aka Billy Crystal and Robin Williams
The award for the most out of nowhere cameo probably goes to these two guys who sat on the gang's sofa in the coffee house. Robin's character thinks his wife is cheating on him and for such an impromptu skit, it's pretty funny.
14 of 29Will Colbert, aka Brad Pitt
Aka co-president of the 'I Hate Rachel' club and lover of thanksgiving food.
15 of 29Paul Stevens, aka Bruce Willis
Paul is dating Rachel after she breaks up with Ross who is dating Paul's daughter Elizabeth. It's one of the best awkward relationship squares that I can think of and that pep-talk moment in the mirror is a-grade brilliance.
16 of 29Richard Crosby, aka Gary Oldman
If you thought the guy who plays opposite Joey in a film then here's why. There's an awkward joke about an oscar that he hasn't won (in real life and on the show).
17 of 29Leonard Hayes, aka Jeff Goldblum
Leonard/Jeff ends up getting peed on by Joey while congratulating him for a great audition, and I think we'll leave it there.
18 of 29Erica Ford, aka Brooke Shields
Yep, Joey's creepy Days Of Our Lives stalker is played by the Brooke Shields. The rabid licking of Joey's finger never sat well with me.
19 of 29Zack, aka John Stamos
To jog your memory, Zack is one of the sperm donors Monica and Chandler interview when they decide to have baby. He doesn't make the cut in the end, btw...
20 of 29Amy Green, aka Christina Applegate
Here we have one of the Green sisters. We only meet Amy twice, and she has a real issue with getting Rachel's daughter Emma's name right.
21 of 29Jill Green, aka Reese Witherspoon
And here we have the other Green sister. She's Rachel's younger sister who comes to find her in the city hoping to start a new life like Rachel did but, well, doesn't. We think dating Ross to spite Rachel might have had a little something to do with it...
22 of 29Tommy, aka Ben Stiller
Remember Tommy the screamer? Yeah he was a bit of a knob to everyone. Especially Ross...
23 of 29Erica, aka Anna Faris
Fun fact, Monica and Chandler's baby girl (one of the twins they adopted from Erica) would be about 14 now.
24 of 29Ryan, aka Charlie Sheen
Ryan, one of Phoebe's old flames, comes into town for a couple of weeks and hangs around even though Phoebe has the chicken pox. I suppose you could say it's kinda sweet.
25 of 29Kristen, aka Gabrielle Union
Kristen is one of the many women that Joey and Ross bicker over. She appears in The One With The Cheap Wedding Dress (when the girls go to that crazy discount store to help Monica find her dress) and ultimately choses to date neither of them.
26 of 29Wendy, aka Selma Blair
Miss Oklahoma runner up and causer of Christmas friction between Chandler and Monica.
27 of 29Jessica Lockhart, aka Susan Sarandon
I really hope no one took Jessica's screen kissing tips seriously. She's one of Joey's Days of Our Lives co-stars who is involved in that weird brain swap scenario.
28 of 29Mackenzie, aka Dakota Fanning
Nine year old Dakota Fanning played the little girl who chats to Joey when he's taken by Chandler and Monica to visit a house out in the suburbs. Neither of them wanted the sale to happen so they bonded.
29 of 29Guy on plane, aka Hugh Laurie
Let's have a moment for the unfortunate, nameless guy who has to sit next to Rachel on the flight from New York to London when she's adamant about telling Ross how she feels.