Careful what you wish for

Ah, Mother’s Day. My own mother never set much store by it. For her, it was a day when sticky-fingered children shyly proffered art-class projects (“Darling! It’s beautiful! It’s…what is it, exactly? A place to put…small things! That’s exactly what I needed!”) accompanied by clumsily-lettered poetry that did not scan. When I had children of my own, I followed her example.

Which means, basically, that I am a snotty asshole with regards to Mother’s Day. I hate the way it has metastasized into a global phenomenon, with everyone who is or ever was a mother or has a mother or knows a mother or once met a mother muscling in on the action. I hate how husbands are supposed to make some huge effort for their wives on Mother’s Day–it’s not WIVES’ day, for crying out loud–and so, when we were together, my ex-husband never offended my refined sensibilities by giving me a token of his esteem. (“I’m not YOUR mother,” I’d sniff. “I’m not THEIR mother, either,” I’d go on, tossing aside the cards my stepmother and mother-in-law started sending after my first kid was born, until they both wised up and focused their good intentions elsewhere instead of on ungrateful, rude me.)

When we were married, my ex-husband gave me flowers on our kids’ birthdays. It was my idea. “Those are the days I became a mother,” I’d tell anyone who asked (and plenty who didn’t.) Oh, I was smug. Look at me, inventing something with meaning! No Hallmark holidays for me! “We’re idiots,” my mother said to me a few years ago. “While we run around with our noses in the air, practically every other woman on the planet is pocketing diamond earrings and getting taken out to brunch.”

But before I could subtly renege on my ideology of obnoxiousness, I got divorced. Whoops.

So now I have the Mother’s Day I always wanted. Nothing overwrought, nothing purchased, lots of clumsy secrecy, spastic attempts at juvenile cuisine, a twenty-four hour martyrdom window (“THIS is where you leave your socks? ON MOTHER’S DAY, NO LESS?”) and enforced physical closeness. On Mother’s Day, everyone must kiss and hug me on demand. This year, my younger son gave me something that looks an awful lot like a shrunken head strung on blue yarn. I’ve been wearing it around my neck, which seems correct, as he keeps gazing at me fondly before asking, “Don’t you just LOVE it, Mom?” And I do.

I also got a rather Oedipal mash note, a mysterious bit of sculpture, and a verbal manifesto denouncing the stupidity of Mother’s Day in general (the apple, apparently, does not fall far from the tree). We putzed around all afternoon, planting things, reading in the sun. It was quite lovely, actually. One mother, two children, a perfectly ordinary day.

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