- Santa does exist

- Of course the Easter Bunny left those white footprints

- Your father was the Native American in the Village People

- Your father played Rugby Union with the All Blacks at no. 8 position.

It is only very recently I’ve learned that my son spent much of his childhood confused about how his dad could be an All Black one minute and a gay icon in an American disco group the next.

By age seven, he’d already dismissed Santa and the Bunny as myths, but he could see the physical resemblance (to the Native American and the Maori no. 8) and until the age of 12 believed his dad was both a rugby international and made hits like Macho Man, In the Navy and Go West.

``What sort of mother tells her son that his father was a ….’’ he wrote in a 1000 word Mothers Day email that detailed various motherly inaccuracies from his childhood.

Last month, for Mothers Day, now living and studying in Melbourne, he whipped up a 1000 word `gift’ and pressed `send’. It worked. I cried. I laughed. I loved.

Recently, our Macho Man (aka his dad) decided I should go North and be mum for the weekend.

I baked a Persian Love cake (google it), packed a couple of bottles of wine and made plans to `hang out’.

Just for a moment, let me complain about Terminal 4 at Tullamarine Airport.

Too many shops. Too far to walk and WTF is this thingy where they don’t display your flight’s departure gate until you have exactly 10 minutes to get from `the shops’ to gate 48, 51 or 52?

According to my fit-bit thingy, it’s exactly 4000 steps from the shops to gate 51.

I guess the plan is the keep you shopping, eating and drinking until the very last departure minute.

My Saturday evening arrival at T4 was also not fun. In the 3000 steps from the arrival gate to the luggage carousel I lost a favourite earring before taking the `short journey’ – another 1000 steps to the one minute pick up zone. ONE minute?

Welcome to Melbourne on a icy, wet, Saturday night.

In the back of my daughter’s very small VW, I sat with the love of my life – the love of every mother’s life – a 20-year-old son.

Is there anything finer? Is there anyone else on earth who can tell you in one breath how much they love you and within a nano second also ask what’s happening for Christmas and what do you want to do for `my’ 21st?

``Don’t be sucked in,’’ his sister bleated from the front seat.

But I was. Gone. Mother of a son. The type of mum I never thought I could be - ``your 21st? Christmas? Of course’’.

A bloody Mary, a bowl of pasta two out of three children ``as good as it gets’’.

Or was it?

``I’ve bought us tickets to a movie,’’ he said last Saturday morning. ``Finding Dory, the sequel to Finding Nemo.’’

We saw Finding Nemo 13 years ago when my now 6’3” 20-year-old with size 14 feet was aged seven.

At seven, he had a full moon of a face, was missing a couple of teeth and had graduated from Aus Kick to a very short lived single season with South Launceston.

Last Saturday my son, daughter and I sat in the dark, eating choc tops surrounded by toddlers.

Yep. As good as it gets.