Mother's Day

I have a rather slanted viewpoint on Mother's Day. Years of being required to do MD service kind of soured me on the whole affair.

If you bought flowers, you were criticized because that was a wasteful gift, chocolates would make her fat, and cards and honest displays of sentiment were met with harsh disapproval and the seeming air of disdain. If Christmas isn't Christmas till somebody's crying, then Mother's Day isn't Mother's Day until someone felt guilty.

I worked hard to make sure the MD wasn't approached in the same way. Most of the time for MD I was given space, the thing that I wanted most after three kids, two cats, one dog and a husband. Space is what I wanted most.

Today, I have lots of space.

Kate will engineer a marvelous but simple dinner complete with courses from appetizer to dessert, and she won't break a sweat doing it. I can always count on flowers (which I DO love) from Kate and Jill and a perpetual look of apology from Paul. I know if he could he would, but he can't so he won't.

We all sit at her large table and talk, listening to the stories of the places we've been and what we've seen. Most people had children for an assortment of reasons, continuation of the family name, someone to take care of you when you're older, the occasional Ooops: lots of reasons. I had a couple of Ooops, but once I realized the potential here, to send people out into the world to find cool things and come back and tell us all about it. Kate, a former journalism major went to the UK, Europe, Egypt and New Zealand to find stories. Jill's gone to Hawaii, Costa Rica and Canada to find what's interesting, and Paul goes to the mountains and shoots things with his friends. All interesting places to see and things to do.

We laugh hard at the stories that are shared, and it's the best part of getting together. I wish I had video of all the stories being told, but thanks to the above mentioned MD hostage taker, video is taboo in this family. Cameras get shot angry looks since years ago we used to get video'd eating Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas dinners. She would video baseball games, but not graduation ceremonies, and that damn video camera was everywhere, all the time. Part of the reason why I've been reluctant to pick up a vid-camera. It gets met with disgust and resistance. Thanks, Gloria.

So MD comes and goes, but not without me referring to it as as hostage holiday. The top winner is Thanksgiving, followed by MD and then Christmas. Many years of research has gone into this dissertation on holiday stress, so I know of which I speak.

My kids always make MD a good day. Though I still encounter some resistance into what I've chosen to do academically, photography, writing, audio, VIDEO and the world of social networking (they can't believe I have a FaceBook page) it's mostly a pretty good time.

I also appreciate the friends in my life who acknowledge maternal status without acknowledging the implied time factor.

I guess after 32 years of MD, I'm a veteran of this holiday, and have worked hard to not make it a bad day for everyone. But at some point, I'm going to have to drag out the video camera. Some of the stories are too funny to not be caught on tape. What a shame that certain things in my kids' lives haven't been documented because of of bad memories. We never get that time back again. Ever.