On Mother’s Day several years ago, my then small sons brought home an art project from Sunday school. It was meant to be a sort of gift/card for me, the focus of their lesson. It consisted of two large circles placed one on top of the other and fastened by a brad in the middle. The top circle read: “My mom does so many things for me” and had a window cut out so that pictures from the bottom circle showed through. The bottom circle featured many brightly colored slices with exclamations such as: “She bakes cookies!” “She cooks dinner!” “She washes my clothes!” “She is happy!” “She meets me after school!” At the dinner table that afternoon, the boys turned the top circle and read each caption with relish. My husband smiled but said nothing. My older son wrinkled his forehead in confusion. Then my youngest son, always the boy to identify the naked emperor, said bluntly: “But our mom doesn’t do any of those things.” And as we ate the beautiful meal prepared by my husband, in clothes washed by my husband, who subsequently had to listen to my strident crabbiness at the inherent sexism of the whole enterprise, we laughed. We laughed hard.
The next year I received another handwritten card. It included these lines: “You are good at reading and writing. My favorite thing we do together is go to the zoo and go to your work. You work for money. You are kooky” They were catching on.
One year when I was a kid, I bought my own mother a card covered with painted lilacs. I was so entranced by the pretty picture that I failed to read the gold script letters which read: “Happy Mother’s Day to my Other Mother.” I handed it over and beamed, watching her read the front over and over with a frown. “Isn’t it beautiful?” I said. My mother said: “Your other mother? Who else is there?” My fidelity was suspect.
This year I purchased my mother an expensive shimmering peach body gel in a fancy bottle, wrapped it in a matching floral box with soft orange tissue paper and then forgot about it in my carry-on suitcase. I was stopped going through security and my package ransacked like Huns to a tiny cardboard village. I was given two options: miss my plane or watch my picked-up-every-container-in-the-store-for-an-hour present tossed in the trash. I did what any mature daughter would do, I burst out crying. It had been a long week. I chose the plane.
Mother’s Day is complicated. The woman who campaigned to institute the holiday spent the rest of her life and family fortune trying to reverse the national recognition. She became disillusioned by commercialization. She is joined in spirit by people who hate the idealized template and sentimentality preached from the pulpits of conventional portrayals. Most people cannot live up to or have not lived with or have not been raised by such paragons of nurturing perfection. For some the day is painful or sad or ignored. The majority sends off their obligatory Hallmark cards and flowers and begins planning their Memorial Day BBQ.
I remember rocking my four month old baby one late, late night and seeing a vision. I saw him at twenty-five sitting in a bar at a table of friends. He was telling them how crazy his mother was and how she had ruined his life in any number of ways. The realization came as clear as the foam on his spectral beer. No matter what I did, I would mess up. I would turn on the TV when I should encourage crayons. I would offer candy when I should serve broccoli. I would doze when I should be attentive. Even if I did everything right, something would go wrong because it always did. I could only do my best. That first Mother’s Day, I thought of the grateful baby and the disgruntled adult. I was navigating both and I was both. More than aggrandizing a biological relationship, Mother’s Day reminds us that the only difference between those who are in charge and those who are not is just a few years, shrinking every day, and at some point we have to forgive and move on to our own mistakes.
This is the first year that my oldest, now in college, will call rather than read me his card in person. My younger son will create a message mix of snappy and snarky and it will make me laugh again, like every year. They know I don’t bake cookies and prefer that I don’t make dinner. They will hopefully buy me the DVD series I have been hinting at. I will call my own mother and she will probably have not received her replacement gift which was sent late. I will feel guilty. And, at last, I will shrug at the whole tangle of authentic appreciation and prescribed mores and take a nap, which I do every Sunday, celebratory or not.
older son wrinkled his forehead in confusion. Then my youngest son, always the boy to identify the naked emperor, said bluntly: “But our mom doesn’t do any of those things.” And as we ate the beautiful meal prepared by my husband, in clothes washed by my husband, who subsequently had to listen to my strident crabbiness at the inherent sexism of the whole enterprise, we laughed. We laughed hard.
You crack me up! Have a happy mutha’s day.
PS: are you as funny in person?
Should it be considered ironic that this post makes me want to be a better son/husband this weekend?
p.s. I agree with Marley. This post had me laughing out loud several times. Sounds like you have smart kids.
One year when I was a kid, I bought my own mother a card covered with painted lilacs. I was so entranced by the pretty picture that I failed to read the gold script letters which read: “Happy Mother’s Day to my Other Mother.”
When I was in second grade, I bought my mom’s Christmas gift from a store that had created little “children’s shopping area,” where kids could come in, pick something out and get it wrapped right there so their parents wouldn’t see what it was. On Christmas morning, my mom unwrapped her gift to find… a beautiful leather cigarette case, with a front pocket for a lighter! Whoops. Mom didn’t smoke, and I hadn’t realized what it was – I thought it was just a pretty little purse.
Mom saved the moment by saying, “This is perfect! I’ll carry my sunglasses in it!” And she did, for years, until that cigarette case was frayed and faded.
Lovely post, Pandora. Per usual.
the “my Other Mother” story makes me laugh. In response to “Who else is there?” one good fallback answer would be “Frank!” I want to wish a happy uncle’s day to my other mother’s brother.
(Happy Mother’s Day, PB)
Thank you for the perfect time to announce. To everyone here who cares: I have a parasite growing inside me that will pop out as an wrinkled alien around the end of October. Right now, it just brushes its half- formed ear as I poke at it and inches away from the camera.
Last Mother’s Day was the only one that I could ignore because no one celebrated at me. The rest of the Mother’s Days for the rest of my life will be acknowledged by someone. I only hope I don’t get flowers every year. I forget holidays like this one, aimed at one person in my life, but I won’t be allowed to forget until I die. Are there holidays in heaven?
This is our first year with our girls thinking about Mother’s Day. Or about mothers — when Eleanor began pre-school, she started saying “Mommy!” and pointing at things; it took a while for her dads to realize that she’d been listening to other kids talk, and thought that “Mommy” meant “Gimmee.”
Now that Eleanor and Rosalind are almost four, they tell folks that their “birthmothers” are named Amy and Nyna, and they love to watch the video of Eleanor’s ultrasound. And they made cards for their grandmas and great grandma. But I’m still trying to figure out what they think mothers are for….
Congratulations, Kate! You’re going to name it Literacy H. the Great, I hope.
Congratulations Kate the Great!
Thank you for the comments and the well wishes for Sunday.
Marleyfan – I am much funnier when I edit and have a thesis. In real life it is a bit hit and miss. The men in my life, however, are endlessly witty, so I don’t have to work very hard. I dull it down when they take the stage.
LP – what a wonderful response from your mom (and I love that I can imagine her smiling mysteriously and looking off into space – http://www.greatwhatsit.com/archives/5421)
E&R’s Papa – doesn’t momma or papa mean “gimmee”?
Wow, that was just deee-lightful to read! I am (I think) like you in that (tho. currently childless) I expect I’d be a rather untraditional mother, eschewing those ghastly, constrictive gender conventions our culture puts on mothers– a burden yoked in celebratory glory of all things I desperately try not to become entrapped by in my usual life.
I am also the daughter of a mother who loves all that sentimentality and Hallmarkian crap. NOT sending a card on time for mother’s day is tantamount to plagiarism in terms of its relative level of offensiveness–to her, to me. You hopefully know what I mean. If nothing else, this holiday makes us consider ourselves in relation to our mothers. HOpefully we see both the similarities and the differences as positives.
And KATE!!!! Holy cow! Is THIS the way Uncle Lane will learn that he’s to become a “GREAT UNCLE” this year?! How awesome. Best best best to you!
Parents are brave. Thanks to you all.
I was almost a dad once, but the girl and I were too afraid. Now I’m sometimes sad about it.
happy mother’s day kate!
*takes a bow* Thank you, thank you, thank you all. Send all happy-baby gifts you might wish to buy to Lane, and he’ll send them across America. Heaven knows I’ll need them because I’ll be poorer than ever.
Kate, I join in the congratulations! And I think Dave’s suggestion in #9 is perfect.