I am very late to this post, really TOO late for practical purposes—but I was distracted by college-selection stuff and then I was out of town (my brother and I went on a fun quick trip to see our parents), and so it is only now I have thought to say this: If you are someone who would normally think of Mother’s Day as a special day for yourself, but your family has historically been…lacking…in celebrating that day, this is your reminder to lay in some supplies.
What I personally like to do is buy some Plausible Deniability Items. Perhaps a can of Pillsbury orange rolls from the grocery store, or a nice box of pastries from the grocery store bakery! Why, we might have those ANYWAY on a Sunday! Perhaps a box of See’s chocolates—it’s not for Mother’s Day, no, it’s just that I like to collect the pretty SPRING FLOWERS TINS they normally have around May! Maybe I buy something that’s been in my online shopping cart for a long time; the early-May timing is merely a coincidence. Anything where, if the family DOES in fact take action this year, I won’t feel silly for having made these purchases I might easily have made ANYway.
If you’re like me, you might feel silly no matter what. You might feel self-indulgent, or self-pitying, or over-reactive, or like it’s Worse Than Nothing if you have to do these things for yourself. You might think, “This is ridiculous: I don’t REALLY CARE about Mother’s Day!” Well then, isn’t it nice that you didn’t buy those items with any special day in mind, but instead just happened to buy them in early/mid-May! But what I have learned is that when Mother’s Day actually arrives, I am very glad to have a few things on hand, even if ahead of time I thought it was worse than nothing.
This year I bought the full-ounce bottle of Pacifica French Lilac perfume that LAST year I bought the .33 roller size of. (It smells like if you had a lilac bush growing right outside your open window, or I guess growing right outside your shoulder.) It was on a sale, so I might have bought it anyway.
(image from Target.com)
And I finally hit the buy button on the lilac cotton sweater I’ve allowed to linger in my Amazon cart forever, despite already owning the same sweater in green and knowing I love it; I got the green one on some $15 flash sale, so for some reason was balking at spending $25. (For sizing purposes: I wear an XL Tall in Old Navy, and I like this sweater in XXL—but I do not like FITTED clothing. I like to be INSIDE a sweater.)
(image from Amazon.com)
At the grocery store today I bought a Cadbury Caramello bar and a Cadbury Fruit & Nut bar, which I might have bought anyway, as they are some of my favorites and they were on sale. I bought the tube of Pillsbury orange-iced rolls, which I might have bought anyway, as a nice treat for any Sunday morning. I bought a pot of sprouted tulip bulbs, which I DEFINITELY would have bought anyway, ever since finding out that if I then carelessly flung those tulip bulbs (after the tulips wilted) into a carelessly shoveled hole in the ground at ABSOLUTELY THE WRONG TIME OF YEAR (spring), they would COME UP AGAIN THE NEXT YEAR, LIKE FREE BONUS RERUN TULIPS.
Also: if you normally do chores of any kind on Sunday (grocery shopping, bathroom-cleaning, laundry, changing the sheets, etc.), may I suggest you plan to do those things sometime between now and the end of the day Saturday? It is very nice, on a Sunday that is just like any other Sunday, to not have any chores to do. If you normally make dinner on Sunday, plan to make a dinner you personally like best, even if (especially if) other people don’t like it as much as you do; or, spontaneously, for no particular reason, plan to order take-out from a place you like, just on a whim because you don’t feel like cooking that particular evening.
Love this, and this corner of the Internet. Thanks for writing…. Enjoying some tea from the stocking stuffers that I bought myself, right now.
I love this so much. I hate that you need to have backup plans, but I love the backup plans you have.
XOXOX
I still have a lot of VERY ANGRY FEELINGS surrounding mother’s day and your family members. But your back-up plans sound sooo lovely!
We’re in the UK (different Mother’s Day, ours is in March right after my niece’s birthday, my husband’s birthday, and our wedding anniversary. So that’s a fun but expensive 10 days…) and my MIL is in the US. Somehow I’ve ended up sorting her Mother’s Day gift on behalf of my husband, which goes against all of my Core Marriage Beliefs (For Thine Own Family Thou Shalt Sort the Gifts). But he was looking at me very helplessly and left to his own devices he would have ordered her yet another kitchen gadget… so I’ve ordered a copy of a family photo album I’d already had made from their trip to visit us last year. My MIL is a super devoted Nonna so hopefully that will do the trick, although it’ll have to wait until they arrive for this year’s trip to actually give it to her.
I did suggest my husband also order flowers internationally or with the help of his US-based brother… but that was dismissed :/
I am planning to go to my favorite greenhouse with another mom because I personally prefer that my flowers still have roots. Zero guilt about ditching the spouse with all the kids.
Buying myself some chocolate is a fantastic idea though.
I have been prowling around my Pinterest board to see what I’ve been pining for for ages. My favorite independent bookstore recently sent up a flare about needing some help, so I donated some money and then bought some books, which I will be reading on Sunday.
In “Why I deserve this” news, I am playing chicken with my spouse about refilling the dish soap dispenser. He has gone so far as to put the jug of detergent on the kitchen counter. SO CLOSE!
Lol! Stay strong.
I am not sure he has ever refilled it in the 14 years we’ve had it.
In the Mother’s Day Treats category, I will generously be the one to go get pastry on Sunday morning. Will I ever return? TBD!
Years ago my husband hassled me for buying the “wrong kind” of soap for the soap dispensers in our house (to be clear the soap worked fine, it was just not the kind he preferred) and I’d just had it. I told him that from that point on buying and refilling the soap dispensers was 100% his job. I don’t think he believed me until we completely ran out of soap in every dispenser (I was reduced to using body wash) after a few days of that he finally bought and refilled. I haven’t bought soap or refilled a dispenser in years. I know it sounds petty as hell, but this was one thing that I could absolutely let fall apart without worrying that one of my kids wouldn’t get something they needed or we’d starve, so I fully committed to winning soap chicken.
TL;DR stay strong in the dish soap wars!
Soap chicken! Lol! Brilliant strategy by the way, I think sometimes having men take on these very specific jobs does seem to be one way to lighten the load a little. Even thought I still feel the frustration of how they miss seeing the big picture of how much we are carrying.
The “you may think it’s silly” paragraph was PERFECTION. I feel so seen.
Favorite bits: “I guess growing right outside your shoulder” and “if I then carelessly flung those tulip bulbs (after the tulips wilted) into a carelessly shoveled hole in the ground at ABSOLUTELY THE WRONG TIME OF YEAR (spring), they would COME UP AGAIN THE NEXT YEAR, LIKE FREE BONUS RERUN TULIPS.”
I would love some free bonus rerun tulips!
Happy Mother’s Day, Swistle!
Tulips will keep coming back even if you decide you’re kind of over the tulips, at least the cheap ones will (I suspect they’re cheap because they’re so hardy and require very little effort to keep going)
But do make sure you’re picking something you’d like to see again
My family is pretty good on this one, but I would like to acknowledge that you are “late” posting this this year because you were “distracted” (consumed?) by commitments you made as a mother and as a daughter. Just sayin’.
I am not engaged in a soap dispenser chicken game, but am pleased to report I have largely won the setting-up-the-coffee for morning chicken game, right down to the I-won’t-check-to-be-sure-that-you-remembered/got-it-right part. Admittedly, this was made much easier by the fact that my DH is an early riser in a way that he cannot avoid, whereas I am only an early riser to the extent that I need to be, and DH’s circadian clock is, like, 2 time zones ahead of how early I generally need to get up (not kidding). So that helped.
But — here’s to perfume, chocolate, and pastries that you will enjoy, and to taking Sunday easy. Go, Swistle, go!
My women’s circle has planned our monthly gathering on Sunday night as a spa/sauna self-care night so I will 100% be going to that as my stepson will be headed to his mom’s, and my darling husband refuses to see that any of the stepmom duties I perform (which is literally 100% of what any mother performs) is at all worthy of notice or recognition, especially on Mother’s day.
Oh my God. I recently read a comment by someone that Mother’s Day activities were hard for her because she was a step-mom and not a legit mom. No. Just no. Step-mom is 100% legit mom, often with the added stress of having to not interfere with the relationship with mom. I am so sorry your family doesn’t see that and so glad you have a spa night planned.
I’m so angry your husband is not recognizing your parenting work. My parents divorced in the 70’s, and both remarried, and had half-week/half-week joint custody, so I’ve had 4 parents since I was 5. I spent mother’s day weekend with my son and with both my moms (and incidentally my dads). Sending love and hugs to you.
Please know I recognize your work.
Way ahead of you sister: I have a pretty beach umbrella that I bought and gave to my husband with instructions to hand it to me on Mother’s Day with a kid’s name on a tag. I saw it and thought of those rare times we go to the beach, when I inevitably can’t find shade as I end up as the one who sits and watches the stuff while others frolic in the water. And there is the cutest bird house stashed at my house that I ooh and aahed over on a shopping trip with my daughter that she offered to buy for me.
Also, there is a nice café that is putting together takeaway Mother’s Day boxes of interesting and yummy foods, and I am having two delivered to the family for nibble sharing on Sunday afternoon, when we’re all going to be helping my mother at her booth at the local Farmer’s Market.
The only way to not end up with a disappointing day for an occasion is to make sure it doesn’t happen. I neglected my usual wisdom in this for my 50th birthday and ended up with two brand new recycling bins as my gift.
That reminds me of a story that gets circulated around my family. One year for Christmas my uncle bought my aunt a laundry basket with different laundry related products in it. The next year she got a lovely pair of diamond earrings! But recycling bins?! That’s up there!
It gets worse: for the 40th birthday of his right hand at work (he owns a gas station and she manages it), he sent her to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. So for her 40th she gets a trip to Florida, and for my 50th(!) I get recycling bins. I didn’t even want them – the ones we had had a few chips out of them but I did. not. care. My daughter had heard me muse about replacing them because I knew it bothered my husband, and mistakenly thought I was contemplating it because I wanted them, so she suggested it.
dude.
When is his birthday? Can you re-gift the recycling bins?
L.O.L.
Update: last night my husband asked me if there was something I wanted to do for Mother’s Day. I pointed out that I had made all the plans for myself, my stepmother, and my mother already, and there was nothing else that could really be fit in at this point.
I want to have a quiet conversation with your husband. Recycling bins? What the actual fuck?
My biggest beef, at this stage of the game, is them wanting me to plan it all for them. Yes, I understand they want to celebrate me. Great. But after being married for over 30 years and a mom for 27(?) or so years (I’m far too tired to do the math right now) neither of them can figure out 1) what or where I might like to eat or 2) what I might like as a gift?
When asked this year what I wanted to eat, I said I don’t care, you know what I like. When asked about a gift I said I wanted nothing (and I don’t. I will buy whatever it is I want – of course, this will be ignored but still…).
So yes. Having a back up plan is always the best bet. Because odds are, no matter how well intentioned they might be, sometimes you just need a back up plan. And yes, I’m planning to get any and all chores out of the way tomorrow so I have the ENTIRE weekend to relax.
Why do we all have to be so ridiculously competent and barely everyone else does the bare minimum, if that, and gets praise if they manage it?
HEAD EXPLODES
Idk why there’s a barely BEFORE everyone. I think the sentence was going differently and I switched it.
I also have to buy the thing I want or plan the thing I want to do. I am buying myself perfume and a cake. Happy Mother’s Day to meeeeee.
Mother’s Day is going to be odd this year. Oldest kid will still be at school (usually he’s home) and wife will be up there with him, helping him pack up his apartment, though she’s returning in the evening, so we’re planning on getting takeout of some sort and receiving gifts from the youngest with dinner. I know they’ll have gifts– they always do, but it will be strange and probably sad, being apart from the older one on MD for the first time and being apart from my co-parent for most of the day, also for the first time.
I just posted about a similar situation here. Sad solidarity fist bump.
I bought that lilac perfume to take in my carry on to my nephew’s wedding in Dec. My usual perfume was too much liquid to be carried on to a plane. It is really nice.
Also, my husband did is annual “oh crap Mother’s day is this Sunday” on Wednesday. So he got his mom a card and took it to the post office immediately. And then he made is annual trip to the mall. He mentioned stopping a Barnes and Noble to look for a manga he wanted so I suppose I will be getting a book for Mother’s Day. I’ve already resigned myself to making dinner plans. My birthday is about 10 days after Mother’s Day. Fortunately this year it is also my daughter’s graduation day. I’ve already told everyone we are focusing on her that day.
Your post was not too late at all, in fact it inspired me to go ahead and buy the truffles yesterday for dessert tomorrow. But do you know what the grocery store thinks we want? Balloons. Soooo may balloons. No thank you.
My family usually does fairly well for Mother’s Day (grading on a serious curve) after 20 years of being a mom. However, this year Oldest’s college got into the mix of crapping on Mother’s Day and it just irks. His college, where 96% of people come from out of state, scheduled their last finals on Mother’s Day and require everyone to be out of the dorms by the next day. The upshot is that H is that currently (on Mother’s Day) 2000 miles away waiting for Oldest to finish his last final so they can pack his stuff and move it to storage then come home late tomorrow. Really, college? Just . . . really??
This seems ridiculously stupid regardless of what day today is. “Hey everyone, make sure you’re taking packing breaks while studying! Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Ooh, I have one! Yesterday, my husband put I Love You pencils on the kitchen table as my gift. He slept until 10:00 and I made pancakes for the kids. Then I went to work. This morning everything is a mess.
What the actual hell?
::sreams into a pillow on your behalf::
I’m amused at this post and comments. What I ask of my family on Mother’s Day is to go for a hike with me and to Not Complain. No gifts are requested.t ime together that is fairly pleasant, or even fun is all I want. After years of Lots of Complaining, its getting better in that department, other than some grousing from my younger child who was tired from a sleepover the night before. Now to brainstorm something with my kids for Father’s Day.