This Mother’s Day morning, I lingered in my bed, listening to my husband and two sons “inventing” French toast in the kitchen for my Mother’s Day breakfast. I love to listen to them chatter: William filling his dad in on the previous day’s sports results, eager to discuss the repercussions on their fantasy teams; Quinn improvising with the cream and sugar and demanding that everyone appreciate how well he can mix; and my husband easily carrying on two simultaneous conversations while keeping the breakfast on track. I love French toast and I love lingering in bed, both rare pleasures, so I couldn’t quite pinpoint why I was feeling so anti-Mother’s Day.
Though I’d gushed and shrieked, I’d felt a little annoyed (and then guilty for feeling annoyed, annoyed for feeling guilty, and so on ...) when the kids had given me a Spa-day gift at the crack of dawn. It wasn’t the early hour; we’re a house of early-risers, and it wasn’t the gift either, God knows I drop enough hints—and Bliss catalogs in the bathroom—in any given week to leave little doubt that a spa certificate is the key to my heart ... just ... well, not on Mother’s Day.
For the week leading up to Mother’s Day, I’d found myself bristling at the steady stream of “Happy Mother’s Day!” salutations at every store and streetcorner. Did the guy at RiteAid even know if I had kids? Maybe the baggage under my eyes gave me away—or maybe his manager forced him to say it to every customer. I was annoyed by the elaborate ad campaigns to “give mother what she deserves” which they decided was chocolates, flowers, diamonds, and perfume. I was mad that my son was going on a school excursion to paint pottery and plant seeds for Mother’s Day gifts, as if his scrawled M-O-M was not precious enough.
I was bothered that I had to find a “thoughtful” gift for my mother-in-law as though just telling her how much we appreciate her was not enough. I was frustrated at myself because I hadn’t written—and forced the kids to write—a card to my own mother in time to reach Australia by Mother’s Day. I knew I’d speak with her on Mother’s Day, as I do every other Sunday, but I felt I’d failed her by not buying and sending a clever card, complete with a hand-drawn picture and recent photographs.
Irritation, annoyance, anger, bother, frustration, failure—these are not exactly the emotions you’d expect from a mother of two in the lead-up to her biggest Holiday of the year. But as I lay on imposed bed rest on Mother’s Day morning, I realized that was my problem—Mother’s Day feels like any other “Holiday” that we stress, shop, clean, and cook for.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to celebrate. I love to shop, I love to eat, I love to see the people I care about, and I love to get spa days. I love my children, and I count my blessings on a daily basis. But this year, all of a sudden, I was hating on Mother’s Day. When I whispered to my husband “you didn’t have to get me a spa-day,” he laughed heartily and said “Oh, but I did!” And I guess he did.
I’ve been wearying of Holidays in general for a while now, but I haven’t had the backbone or the heart to really shake up how we celebrate. I’ve always felt that we hype too much, buy too much, eat too much, waste too much, and yet I’ve never scaled back. I worry that by getting so much my kids will have so little. They’re brainwashed from school, family, friends, and TV into thinking that “more is more” when it comes to special occasions. Holiday sentiments are force-fed from an early age and we’ll pay whatever it takes to create the “happy” memories and perfect pictures.
It’s possible that I was feeling a little more pomped-out than usual on this particular Mother’s Day morning. A few days earlier, we had received a notice from my youngest son’s school to inform us of their “graduation” plans. Yes, Quinn is moving from one corner of his playschool to another, so the school is planning an elaborate luncheon, performance, and ceremony to mark this grave occasion. The four-year olds will don caps and gowns to perform an array of songs and if it’s anything like their Christmas performance, we won’t be able to hear their charmingly out-of-tune little voices over the taped versions of the songs, or see their stunned faces behind the flashing and recording cameras. The notice stated that the costs have been reduced this year to $100 per kid graduating, and an additional $15 for every family-member attending. After many dinner-table discussions and mother-to-mother reality checks, I decided that I simply could not go along with this nonsense and told the school that Quinn would not attend. I felt liberated, finally.
So, as I lay in bed pondering the forced meaning of “giving mother what she deserves” on Mother’s Day, I decided to make it mean something real to me. I wrote notes, on plain unremarkable paper, to my friends who are mothers. I told my friend Beth that I was thinking of her this Mother’s Day—seeing her mother her beautiful one-year-old twins brings such joy to my heart, especially knowing how hard she worked to conceive and carry them. I wrote to my friend Grainne who is pregnant with her first child. She lost her own mother a few years ago and I know that becoming a mother will heal those hurt and hungry places of her heart.
I wrote to my sister, mother of three young girls and pregnant again with what she hopes is a boy. I told her how proud I am of my little sister the mom, and of my three beautiful nieces. I also told her how proud I know I’ll be of my fourth niece! Sitting there, writing from-one-mother-to-another notes, I felt the meaning of Mother’s Day. And later that day, as we strolled the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and my sons alternated between asking if I was having a happy Mother’s Day and wishing me a happy Mother’s Day, I felt the beauty of just stopping—stopping to look at their ice-creamed faces; stopping to remember their arrival into my life; just stopping.
“I’ve since decided to opt out of over-celebrating, which my husband says is my way of short changing him on Father’s Day!” (Note: my stopping didn’t start in time for me to return the spa-certificate!) This doesn’t mean no more Holidays: we can still celebrate, and shop, and eat, and enjoy, but we will always stop. We’ll stop and find the meaning.
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