Oh Please, Oh Please

Mother's Day has just passed and I am fascinated by the assortment of objects that advertisers tell husbands and offspring that Mom lusts after in the middle of the night. I happen to know that in some families there is a serious degree of competition between the children, adult ones especially, as to who gets Mom the best present. I have some dark memories of a few Mother's Day when I went in on a gift only to have a sibling announce to our Mother that the gift was 90% from them because I had only given 1$ towards the mock crystal ashtray that she would never use because ... well she didn't smoke. Let it not be for me to say who had selected the gift against some one's better judgment. So as an adult I had enough experience to say nay to any suggestion that we buy a single gift for our mother. I also came to realise that the day was an opportunity to show conspicuous consumption on the part of certain family members. Then I observed that my family was not alone in this activity. Friends would bemoan the amount of money a sibling had spent on Mom because it meant that they had to at the very least come close to matching it.

My response to the pressure was simple: a card and, in a good year, flowers. The thought process was as follows: when I was five a dried bean necklace was greeted with hugs and enthusiasm; age ten I made a special card and made a cake - positive response from Mom; age fifteen - no pouting for the entire day, cooked lunch, bought card and made floral arrangement from Mom's garden, response was warm enough to encourage me to duplicate the day the following year. At twenty one I produced the first grandchild a month before the day and considered that I had given the best possible gift of all time. There was a card sent to remind my Mom that she was now also a Grandmother - wow!

As I grew older I heard others discussing the day as an opportunity to let Mom know that she is special because they could afford to buy her crystal vases and silverware. I spent some time considering what day of the year was more special to me. A made up holiday from the early 1900s or the day on which I was born. My birthday won. A birthday is individual. It shouts out to the world, okay to those who know you, that it is YOUR day. There are certainly thousands who were born on the same day but it is the day on which you arrived. No amount of hype over any other day can cancel out that singular event. It belongs to you.

Mother's Day is nice. It's an opportunity to bow your head a little to your mother and thank her but if you really love your mother then you do that more than once a year and you both know that there is a relationship there that can withstand badly chosen gifts, a lack of flowers, a 'lost' card because a hug on a day when she needs you is worth more than any hallmark card or over priced brunch. We mothers get angry, we raise our voices, we moan, we nag because we are human but underneath it all I, for one, am grateful that I am a mother to two wonderful daughters who have survived my mothering skills and become adults I like and love and of whom I am proud.