I’m a bit of a curmudgeon (I was first accused of being that when I was about 25 years old, at which time I didn’t know the meaning of the word) and that sometimes comes out on Mother’s Day. Understand, I am not a mother and my mother is long gone. So the day basically has no meaning to me, personally.
My own mother told me to ignore the day as she felt it was a fabrication of Hallmark and related industries and she was probably right so I was raised to disdain it. She practically begged us not to celebrate Mother’s Day. And yet, now that I'm grown and not a mother, I have to say, it's a painful day. It seems like they make a bigger deal of it than ever. I won't go to church today because in our church they always ask all the women who are mothers to stand up -- so virtually every woman in the church stands up while I remain seated -- and then everyone claps. There are so many women who are not mothers or mothers who have lost their children or even those of us who have lost mothers and miss them or, turned upside down, those who have unpleasant memories about their mothers or even those whose children have gone astray in one way or another. Mother’s Day, as the greeting card industry would have it, only seems to strike one note and there never seems to be any compassion for these possible variations on the word ‘mother.’ In my world, the word ‘mother’ can evoke a whole spectrum of emotion and set me offkey for a week.
I don't really know if it could or should be otherwise celebrated, or, as my mother would have had it, not at all but it seems out of scale at this point, especially with all the men being blown away in Afghanistan or wherever, leaving so many heartsick mothers. We just continue on with hearts and flowers and making sure every man feels great shame for not celebrating his wife or mother on this day. I had a man over yesterday who was helping me with various necessary chores around the farm. We were washing my kitchen windows, me on the inside and he on the outside, and chatting as we worked. He was relating to me the pressure he is under every time this day rolls around. Last year, he told me, he bought his wife a staple gun which he thought she could use for her projects but it didn’t go over very well. Not sweet enough. This seems so needless. As my mother used to say, if you feel it, it will be there all year long.
I suppose if I were a mother, I might feel differently but I always thanked my mother for having such a mature attitude about Mother’s Day. Admittedly, and she would agree if she were alive to read this, she was not a mother who felt any need to trumpet herself as a Mother. It was just one part of her. I recall that my first mother-in-law was pretty harsh on the subject -- if we sent her a card, she wanted a gift, and if we sent her a gift, it wasn’t the right one, and so on, never enough and God forbid we should forget the day altogether. We heard about that for the rest of the year (she was a bona fide tour guide for guilt trips). To make matters worse, her son was an only child. The pressure was intense. Such treatment made me feel grateful to my mother who sat the day out on the sidelines.
So that is my curmudgeonly contribution to this day. God bless all mothers, as they truly are the start of it all and yet, feelings of gratitude should come when they rise up and not on designated days. And certainly not as yet another day to rack one's brain for another gift to buy. As a result, and aside from all of the other reasons I listed, you just might not feel grateful on this day. And that’s a shame.
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My own mother told me to ignore the day as she felt it was a fabrication of Hallmark and related industries and she was probably right so I was raised to disdain it. She practically begged us not to celebrate Mother’s Day. And yet, now that I'm grown and not a mother, I have to say, it's a painful day. It seems like they make a bigger deal of it than ever. I won't go to church today because in our church they always ask all the women who are mothers to stand up -- so virtually every woman in the church stands up while I remain seated -- and then everyone claps. There are so many women who are not mothers or mothers who have lost their children or even those of us who have lost mothers and miss them or, turned upside down, those who have unpleasant memories about their mothers or even those whose children have gone astray in one way or another. Mother’s Day, as the greeting card industry would have it, only seems to strike one note and there never seems to be any compassion for these possible variations on the word ‘mother.’ In my world, the word ‘mother’ can evoke a whole spectrum of emotion and set me offkey for a week.
I don't really know if it could or should be otherwise celebrated, or, as my mother would have had it, not at all but it seems out of scale at this point, especially with all the men being blown away in Afghanistan or wherever, leaving so many heartsick mothers. We just continue on with hearts and flowers and making sure every man feels great shame for not celebrating his wife or mother on this day. I had a man over yesterday who was helping me with various necessary chores around the farm. We were washing my kitchen windows, me on the inside and he on the outside, and chatting as we worked. He was relating to me the pressure he is under every time this day rolls around. Last year, he told me, he bought his wife a staple gun which he thought she could use for her projects but it didn’t go over very well. Not sweet enough. This seems so needless. As my mother used to say, if you feel it, it will be there all year long.
I suppose if I were a mother, I might feel differently but I always thanked my mother for having such a mature attitude about Mother’s Day. Admittedly, and she would agree if she were alive to read this, she was not a mother who felt any need to trumpet herself as a Mother. It was just one part of her. I recall that my first mother-in-law was pretty harsh on the subject -- if we sent her a card, she wanted a gift, and if we sent her a gift, it wasn’t the right one, and so on, never enough and God forbid we should forget the day altogether. We heard about that for the rest of the year (she was a bona fide tour guide for guilt trips). To make matters worse, her son was an only child. The pressure was intense. Such treatment made me feel grateful to my mother who sat the day out on the sidelines.
So that is my curmudgeonly contribution to this day. God bless all mothers, as they truly are the start of it all and yet, feelings of gratitude should come when they rise up and not on designated days. And certainly not as yet another day to rack one's brain for another gift to buy. As a result, and aside from all of the other reasons I listed, you just might not feel grateful on this day. And that’s a shame.
Read More