Posted on May 8, 2016 by Bernadette Nason
Dear American Mothers’ Day,
I have mixed feelings about you. I don’t want to sound mean-spirited, and I genuinely want everyone to feel loved, but I wonder if you’ve lost your way. When I was growing up, Mother’s Day meant, to me at least, the celebration of my own mother. Dad wouldn’t have given Mum a gift because, well, she wasn’t his mother. He had his own mother. Of course, my dad was never there to give anyone a gift, and his own mother was dead, but that’s another story.
As I was leaving a restaurant last night with my ex-husband and stepson, the waiter wished me, Happy Mothers’ Day! — a random man, albeit a kind, well-meaning one, giving what he thought were good wishes to a complete stranger about whom he knew nothing. Did he think the young man was my son? Did I look like I had a passel of children elsewhere? Either way, he was wrong. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know that my stepson had come to town to visit his real mom on Mothers’ Day and we were going out for dinner so he could visit with his father. It has never, and probably will never occur to him to wish me Happy Mothers’ Day. I’m his stepmother and he doesn’t put me in the same category as his mother. In the past, I’ve been a bit sad about that, but it is what it is. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t like me. In fact, in recent years, we’ve finally become friends, for which I’m enormously grateful. It took a lot of work on both sides.
When did Mother’s Day, the celebration of one’s own mother, become Mothers’ Day, the celebration of all motherly types of any kind everywhere? Do I seem mean-spirited, as if there are women that I wish to be taken off the list? I hope not. I just don’t want a stranger to wish me Happy Mothers’ Day because he’s been conditioned by consumerism to think that I must need or want it.
You see, for those of us who don’t have a child, whether we couldn’t have one, lost one, chose not to have one, whatever the reason, the Day of the Mother has the potential to become a bit weird, as if we’re being forced to accept the concept that all women are in some way mothers and must be acknowledged for it in some form or fashion, whether appropriate or not. Go find a “mother” category and fit within it, ladies! It’s almost as if we have less value if we haven’t got children…as if, being childless, we are less important.
There you have it, American Mothers’ Day, you confuse me every year. I want to believe you’re a positive thing, like when I was little, only I’m not sure you are. I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re presenting yourself as an all-loving, all-accepting, all-encompassing celebration, when you’ve actually sold your soul to the dark side for the sake of a little extra cash.
On that note, I wish my dear mother: HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY. If she were alive, I’d make her a silly card and pick her a bunch of primroses from her own flowerbed, as I used to.
And to all other women everywhere, I wish you: Happy Women Who Have Ever Had Any Kind of Maternal Instinct About Anyone or Anything Day. I hope that someone somewhere got you a card, flowers, chocolates or at least, a huge bottle of Malbec to help drown out the Hallmark commercials; if not, treat yourself because YOU ARE WORTH IT!
As an aside: Thanks to my lovely ex-husband who did, in fact, write a card, buy me chocolate, and cook me lunch. I’m hoping that the bottle of Malbec on the sideboard is mine as well…
Final Outing with my Mum, to Portsmouth
Catherine Crowley says:
So glad you picked up on what I thought the cartoon was conveying. I had just read a post from Anne Lamott about her mixed feelings about Mother’s Day. Had a really bad relationship with my mom, and have one daughter, who stopped speaking to me 12 years ago. Lots of pain in these mother daughter relationships.
Love the picture of your mother. And love your writing,
Bless,
Cathy