I am a happy mother of four. I have the best kids in the world. I love them more than chocolate. It's not the mothering part that messes w/ me. It's the expectations.
Sunday! SUNDAY! Sunday! Make sure you have flowers or some jewelry or reservations at some restaurant! Barring all that, make sure you have at least stood in a crowded grocery store aisle w/ a bunch of other strangers selecting, reading and replacing card after card after card attempting to summarize in curly writing and a shimmery image of flowers OR comic sans and some cartoonish race-neutral scene of animals, the relationship between your mother and you. If you miss it, you're toast b/c you only have TWO DAYS EVERY YEAR to tell your mom that you appreciate what she is in your life. (The other being her birthday.)
That is the pressure I feel. I stink at doing that. I cannot just go buy another sun catcher or wind chime. My mother doesn't need another statuette and neither do I. No more clutter. Too many people are allergic to perfume so it feels dangerous to wear it or to give it.
As little kids, we just made cards at school out of construction paper. Now the poor teachers have to come up w/ gift-worthy crafts. I'm not gonna lie: I love the frame my son brought home for me. The decoupaged tissue paper makes it look like sea glass and the sentiment he wrote inside is 100% from his 11 yr. old heart. (I know b/c I *know* his heart.) I just wonder if the teachers have enough to worry about w/ out having to be responsible for 30 little potted plants that have to go into 30 little paper lunch sacks still looking good and alive by the Friday before Mother's Day. Please. I'm okay w/ you handling teaching my kid how to do long division. That's what my husband pays you for. Also, I have a black thumb and I kill every plant that enters my home and then I feel guilty. Really. I've already done it twice this spring. It's gotten to the point where I feel panic when one of my children arrives home w/ a plant in a foggy little bag. I wonder if the plant feels it too.
What's the day really supposed to entail anyway? Am I supposed to sleep in and feel good if I hear my husband out in the living room breaking up arguments and answering 143 crazy questions? It only feels like peace for a little while and then it begins to feel like loneliness and like I'm shirking my responsibilities. There are lots of comics and funny articles out there saying that moms want breakfast in bed and then someone else to clean it up -- but what if the family doesn't deliver? Then is it resentment for not getting breakfast in bed? Resentment for having to clean up the kitchen? Resentment toward my husband for not "orchestrating" all that?
My husband is sort of a "wary" cook. He doesn't like to attempt recipes unless he's sure he can master them. So for me, that either means cooking or having tacos or takeout for the big day. Again, am I supposed to distance myself from my family as they struggle to achieve something in what is, essentially, "my department"? My husband doesn't expect me to mow the lawn, coach the team, fix the car and go be a metrologist on Father's Day. Why would I expect him to do all the things I do as a mom? Do I want Mother's Day for him to be wrought w/ anxiety and expectations? No, see, that's what I'm trying to avoid.
My brother said to me once that he thought the perfect day for a
mom would be a day w/ out her kids. I told him that I love my kids to
pieces. I don't want to be separated from them. They are my joy.
They're also a lot of work. I said the perfect day would be getting
to be a mom w/ out having to do the work but the truth is, it doesn't work that
way. When you say, 'yes' to mothering, you say 'yes' to everything that
goes w/ it. You get those legendary stinky diapers. You get the
whining. You get sleepless nights filled w/ a vomiting kid. You get
to clean up the vomit when they miss the bucket. You get TOILET TRAINING!
This is not the AKC where you own something beautiful but don't do the
handling. If someone else is doing that stuff, they are parenting your
child and they deserve credit for parenting.
Now that I have 13+ years of parenting under my belt (which only means I have 13+ years of experience and DOES NOT make me an expert by any means), I have some idea of what my mom had to endure and to put it bluntly, I don't feel like a card or a bunch of cut flowers is good enough. For ME, that sort of feels like a cop out. As if I could ever buy or give something that adequately expresses gratitude for what I put her through. The bigger problem w/ that is that instead of settling for mediocre, I freeze and do nothing. I do this at birthdays too. I don't know what to do so I do nothing.
When I think back to the days and gifts that have touched my heart, they weren't necessarily on a special day. In fact, my birthday falls two days into rifle season in our state and so has gone largely unnoticed most years b/c my husband is at deer camp and it's just me at home w/ the kids who have often been too little to put on some big celebration. Additionally, my practical side has screamed, "Don't spend money on something I don't need!" which makes the gift thing, admittedly, difficult for others. Things w/ my family get busy and frantic and I mean nothing dramatic when I say that cards and even gifts have arrived and I've puzzled at the reason until I've noticed that, indeed, I have lived another year and someone deemed me worthy of their remembrance. (Imagine someone handing you a cute little package w/ an expectant smile on their face and you thinking, "Huh. I wonder what this is for?" and your face actually reflecting that sentiment b/c you are, in fact, clueless. You wrack your brain trying to figure out the date and were you supposed to get THEM something too and then it dawns on you that this person remembered your birthday even if you, yourself DIDN'T! They took time and effort and money and perhaps even craftiness and creativity and remembered you and you were just going your merry way wondering if you had enough bread to make school lunches tomorrow. Then you get to smile and try to express that they've made you feel special, strangely enough on a day that's become so lackluster that it doesn't even pop up on your emotional calendar.) So if you forgot my birthday, don't worry about it b/c I forgot it too.
It sort of works both ways. Do you know that if I know it, your birthday is probably on my calendar? I see it. I notice it on that day. I think of you all day long. I'm serious. I pray for you. I wonder what you're doing. I will most likely forget to call you or even post anything on your facebook page but you have been dancing through my mind all day long. Really. Between making the coffee, picking up the kids, starting dinner and making the bed, I've been thinking of you. I just stink at letting you know.
These special days just get in my way. If I see something online that I think would make you smile, I want to send you the link and not wait for a special day. I want to have ice cream or coffee w/ you on a random Tuesday. Do I have to wait for a day w/ a title? As for Mother's Day, even if I bought my mother a mansion in God's Country complete w/ servants and birds trained to sing her favorite songs, I could never repay her for the hell I provided while I was her ward. Yay for guilt? My family isn't going to become psychic and give me a work-free Mother's Day (and let's face it, I can't compete w/ deer camp) but I refuse to live my remaining Mother's Days and birthdays holding a grudge b/c my life isn't like something in a fairy tale. I don't need more baggage, emotional or otherwise. How 'bout I just love you every day?
Today, I will be happy if my kids play outdoors. We'll probably have leftovers and whatever I cook. I'm going to fold laundry and help my son w/ his state report. I need to look at the summer dance schedule and see what day my daughter will be in classes. It's not like the world stops spinning.
Yeah. That's why Mother's Day and birthdays are hard for me.
Such day. Very mother. Much relax. Do njoy. Wow.
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