Mother's Day: It's complicated

We are not big holiday people. I think I need to start by saying that so you understand where I’m coming from with this take on Mother’s Day.

“We” here meaning me, my mom, dad, and sister.  We were a pretty tiny family, as far as things went back then. Most of my friends and cousins came from large broods with even larger extended families. Having seven or eight kids was the norm. A family of two was freakish.  

We celebrated the big cultural holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, with as much gusto as anyone else I knew. We did the same stuff as everyone else too, but on a smaller scale: big dinners, presents from Santa, baskets filled with chocolate bunnies and marshmallow peeps. But we never did the other days, the ones my mother always referred to as “Hallmark Holidays” -- Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. So maybe that’s one reason I used to take such a blasé view of them. I don’t have a lot of memories of these unholidays, at least from childhood. 

I remember making cards for my parents when I was little. I remember going to the drug store and buying those thin boxes filled with perforated valentines, and punching them out and giving them to all my classmates and my teacher. But I don’t remember anything specific at all. On the Hallmark holidays, we didn’t do special barbecues or visit special places. 

The first Mother’s day I remember with even the remotest bit of clarity is when I was eight months pregnant with my first child. I was on my way to my mom’s house just to say hi. I stopped at a roadside vendor to get her a three-buck bouquet of carnations, which I knew she’d accept dripping sarcasm, “Ah. I thank you SO much. You know how much I LOVE this holiday.” Or maybe honestly, “You spent too much. Really. Don’t waste your money.”

I remember it was a busy road, just around the corner and down the hill from my mom’s.  It was a warm day. Cars zoomed by, blaring music, honking at my rusty Datsun pulled tight against the curb, as I chose from the bouquets in the white plastic buckets in the shade under the vendor’s umbrella. I probably bought my mom a yellow or white bunch, colors she’d find less sentimentally offensive than pink. I paid and thanked the guy and he wished me a happy Mother’s Day.  

I probably pointed to my big belly as I said, “Not Mother’s Day for me yet. Next year.” In truth, I’d woken up that morning thinking that my husband would be giving me a gift, or at least wish me a happy day. But he hadn’t.  All he’d said about the day was that we needed to be at his parent’s house that afternoon for the traditional family barbecue. 

I didn't grow up in a barbecue family. We had a little Hibachi by the side of the house but that was it. My parents weren’t into eating outside, plus my dad was a golf addict and wasn’t around much on weekends. On Sundays from March to November and sometimes for longer if the weather allowed, my dad was awake by seven and already into his first game of the day well before the rest of us woke up. He’d come home just as my mom was starting supper, usually carrying a goody or two from the bakery down the street. 

On Mother’s Day, he’d bring home a box of Russell Stovers too. Though my mom always said that he shouldn’t have, she’d open that box right after dinner and made sure to take the best chocolates, the ones with fudge, marshmallow, pecans, walnuts, before handing the remains – the ones with neon interiors, to me and my sister and dad. 

I’m sure I was rubbing my tummy, while I was figuring what color flowers to buy my mom that day. Rubbing my tummy was my favorite thing to do when I was pregnant.  My first born was quite the gymnast in utero, always somersaulting and cart wheeling, and I was always cheering her on with love pats and whispers. She and I were connected from the day I found out I was pregnant. We were cemented at the first flutter, around the sixteen-week mark. I loved feeling my belly crest and dip. Was blown away by how she loved to respond to the sound of my voice.

I’d woken up that morning twenty-eight years ago thinking, “Happy Mother’s Day to me” because I already felt like a mom. I felt silly and somewhat ashamed, when it became apparent that I was the only one in our apartment who thought that way.  A part of me even thought, “What’s wrong with me, thinking I deserved anything today?” 

The man handed me my change. I don’t remember what he looked like, it’s been close to three decades now, but I imagine him as scruffy, unshaven, thin. I remember he was middle-aged, not young like my husband.  Before I could leave, he handed me a second bouquet. “Happy Mother’s Day,” he said again.

 

His kindness caught me off guard. I thanked him and blurted out that he was the first one to ever give me a Mother’s Day present. 

His response was a funny look then, then he nodded or waved. I don't remember much beyond that look.

Though my parent’s house was less than a mile away, it took about a half hour for me to get there. I took a longer route, through the next town and back, inhaling deeply, exhaling hard, cursing those hormones that kept wetting my eyes and nose.