Mother’s Day is over for another year, and I am glad. I wish to get rid of that holiday. It can be so fraught and complicated, for so many reasons.
And it feels impossible to complain about. Any complaint at all sounds like being ungrateful, or being demanding, or wanting the princess treatment, or not letting people choose their own way to show love, or not appreciating that I get to be a mother when so many people want to but can’t, or making too big a deal out of a holiday I don’t even like. And I feel like the potential for misunderstandings is just ENORMOUS—especially since everyone sees things through their OWN set of circumstances.
But I want to talk about it anyway. I saw a lot of conversations on Twitter yesterday that showed me that, among the MANY ways to have a fraught Mother’s Day, a lot of you are having similar experiences and similar feelings to mine, and I found those conversations very comforting to read: like, I am not the only one who cannot figure this out, and I am not the only one with a family like mine, and I am not the only one having these feelings about it. So I will tell you how it went for me, and I will tell you what I thought/felt about that, and I will also tell you what I have been doing in a (partly successful, partly not) attempt to mitigate all that.
I feel like I have very low standards for what constitutes a successful Mother’s Day. I don’t WANT people to spend money on me; I don’t WANT a big deal made over me; I CRINGE at the idea of being the center of attention at a brunch or other celebration. The only year I kicked up any fuss was the year my family did literally less than nothing: one of the kids asked Paul if they should make plans, and Paul shrugged that off, so not only did they do nothing, they DECIDED to do nothing, and furthermore Paul effectively PREVENTED there from being something. And then all that day I was seeing pictures on Facebook of other people’s families doing Mother’s Day things, and everywhere I went in my house there were messes left for me to handle, and I felt terrible and like a drudge and completely unloved, and I wanted to leave all those terrible ingrates in their self-made squalor and go away by myself, possibly permanently. That was the one year I made any complaint to the family, and I don’t feel I was out of line, or acting spoiled, or being demanding, or not letting people show love in their own way. I had set up an easy laid-back situation where the bare minimum would be plenty, and they had said “Eh, too much effort.”
Here are the ways it can make a mother feel, when Mother’s Day is apparently too hard for anyone to do anything about:
• Like maybe the reason no one is doing anything is that she is a bad mother. Near Mother’s Day, the internet is FULL of grown-ups talking about how Mother’s Day is hard for them because they had a terrible mother, and how they have to find alternate ways to appreciate / cope with the holiday. How many of those bad mothers don’t even KNOW they were bad mothers? Maybe SHE is a bad mother and doesn’t know it, and so asking for Mother’s Day to be celebrated just adds a new breathtaking layer of badness to her mothering.
• Like maybe she is not a BAD-bad mother, but definitely a mediocre/sub-par mother. And so then can’t you just picture this absolutely mediocre mother preening and waiting to be praised for her spectacular mothering on Her Whole Special Day? It’s embarrassing! Does she think she’s a mother like in the commercials and in all the online tributes, where her family loves her and WANTS to celebrate the day? CRINGE! Who’s going to tell her she is not that kind of mother?? I mean YIKES, this is AWKWARD.
• Like maybe she’s a perfectly fine mother as a person, and her intentions have been good, but her parental efforts are clearly ineffective, and all her years of lessons about gift-giving, thinking of what others might want, being considerate, having empathy—those have all completely failed. She’s a terrible teacher, obviously, and also no one wants to model their behavior after hers, obviously—and oh no, what OTHER of her teachings have the children completely failed to learn??
• Like maybe she is a perfectly fine mother as person, but her family doesn’t love her or care about her. And they never will. For whatever reason. She just doesn’t have that kind of family, that’s all.
Anyway. After the truly tanked Mother’s Day a few years ago, I came up with a three-part plan, and that’s what I’ve been doing since:
1. Set an example on Father’s Day. I was ALREADY doing this, but now I make A Big Pointed Point Of It. It’s too bad Father’s Day doesn’t come first: 11 months is a long time for a lesson to percolate. But it’s what we’ve got, so anyway on Father’s Day I go very heavy-handed about how we need to think about what Dad would like, and how we should think throughout the day of little things that might make the day feel a little more special for him. I talk about how some of the best gifts on such a day are gifts of SERVICE: let’s take his car to the car wash and use the fun super-powerful coin-operated vacuum cleaner there! let’s clean off the coffee table without being asked, since we know that’s a particular preference of his! And I talk about how some of the best gifts are gifts of DEFERENCE: let’s think about what HE might like best for dinner! let’s let HIM choose what we watch on TV! And I talk about how it’s not about spending a lot of money or buying big gifts or doing huge difficult things, but more about Thinking Of The Other Person, and Making The Day A Little Special: maybe while at the grocery store, pick up a bag of those lemon drops he likes; maybe bake some cookies or some other dessert we know he likes; maybe do some little task he usually does, so that he doesn’t have to do it. I then say to the children, “Okay, so what sort of thing appeals to each of you? Let’s each pick a thing we’re going to do for Dad.”
2. Make it clear ahead of time what I would like. I hate this. I hate having to do this. I feel like this can so easily be spun as filling out an order form, or like “My mother was so controlling and had to have things Exactly Her Way. She even TOLD US what to do for Mother’s Day!” But my family does not seem to be able to handle it on their own. And Paul does not seem able to take his one day per year to train the children in thoughtfulness and empathy, though Paul has many other fine qualities that may mean the decision to marry him was not a stupid one: for example he will spend dozens of hours patiently and cheerfully working with a child on a science project or a math assignment, tasks that after 30 seconds make me want to literally scream and cry. So he is able to teach, but apparently unable to teach THIS, so I will teach this and he will help with science projects.
3. Find ways to celebrate it myself. Put cream and hot-chocolate mix in my coffee. Deliberately skip all skippable chores: no laundry, no bathroom-cleaning, no wiping kitchen counters. Skip anything I don’t want to do and don’t have to do, even if it means I’ll just have to do those things the next day. Do more things I do want to do, like reading and napping and playing phone games and snacking and browsing online stores. Definitely have a treat with afternoon coffee. Wine with dinner. Etc.
I waited a bit this year to see if they would take the job on themselves so I could skip the second part of that plan, but it got close to Mother’s Day and I sensed no Secret Consults, so a few days ahead of time I said to Paul, “I don’t want to Fill Out An Order Form or whatever [that’s his family’s take on making wish lists, which is one of my family’s practices, so this is familiar shorthand], and if people already have their own plans, that’s great! it’s perfect! I love it!—but if people are TENSE about it, or think they have to BUY things (and especially in quarantine when that’s more difficult than usual), I can tell you some things I would very much enjoy that would not take money or much effort.” And Paul paused in a way that communicated “OhGodMother’sDay” and then said, very casually, “Why don’t you tell me?”
So I told him that what I would like was to have those canned Pillsbury orange cinnamon rolls for breakfast (in my family growing up, we had those for Special Occasions like birthdays and Mother’s/Father’s Day), and that I had already acquired a tube of them. That I would like us at some point during the day to go outside and take a photo of me with the kids. And that all day long I wanted to not have to nag anyone to do their chores, or remind them to put their dishes in the dishwasher. And that if, for example, the cat threw up, I wanted everyone to think, “Well, MOM shouldn’t have to handle that, not on MOTHER’S DAY!” Ditto for if the toilet paper roll ran out. And Paul cooks on Sunday nights anyway, but I wanted to get to choose which of his three rotating meals we would have, and I wanted to add a side of that garlic-herb bread-machine bread, but that I would make that. And then after dinner I wanted us to watch the movie Knives Out and eat popcorn. And as a BONUS item, but by no means would my happiness rest on it, it would be very pleasing to me if someone would make cookies.
Okay, please pause and evaluate that list of requests and tell me if you think it is demanding or princessy. I have not asked anyone to buy me anything. There is almost no extra effort, almost no additional chores; for the most part I am asking people ONLY to do the chores they were supposed to do ANYWAY, but without ME having to do the thing I ALREADY SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DO, which is nag them. I am mostly asking for things we ALL enjoy: the orange rolls, the movie, the popcorn, the cookies (the kids LIKE to bake cookies, and often ask to). I am asking for two gifts of deference: I want to get to choose the dinner among the three options, I want to get to choose the movie. I am also, by requesting that I not have to clean up cat barf, asking that the day be treated as if it is special for me.
Think about what each person has to do differently, to make me happy. VERY VERY LITTLE. Think of how many of the things I want are treats for them as well. ALMOST ALL.
Well. I had a fine Mother’s Day. I felt like I set a pretty low bar, and some of those things were still not met, but other things surpassed it; and the things that were not met are things I can address at Father’s Day and in the way I handle Mother’s Day next year. But here is what I found: for me, the reason Mother’s Day is such a fraught holiday is that it puts a spotlight on things that are usually just simmering on the back burner, or even simmering way off the stove, maybe in some back corner of the kitchen. As Mother’s Day approaches, I start noticing those things more because I am anticipating what might be about to happen on Mother’s Day and how I’m going to feel about those various possibilities; on Mother’s Day, I notice them a HUGE AMOUNT; and after Mother’s Day, it takes awhile to stop noticing them so much.
I am not discussing here what portion of the problem belongs to society and which parts to the participants; nor how those problems ought to be dealt with in society/households/individuals; nor how my own household could have been set up a different way to avoid any of them, nor how I could go back in time to change any of those things, nor how others would never allow such a situation to exist in their own, different households; nor how these issues might also affect, say, FATHERS, or OTHER HOLIDAYS, or whatever; I am talking here only about how Mother’s Day for me in my household (and for similar others in similar households) can bring certain things to my attention in a way that, for me, temporarily but dramatically increases unhappiness, making the holiday unpleasant. Here are some of those things, which of course will not apply in every household/family:
• The way communal/household tasks (changing the toilet paper roll, cleaning up cat barf) can fall disproportionately to us—with, in fact, other family members not even considering doing them, but just leaving them without even thinking about it, walking right past the same obvious-to-solve issue (such as something that has fallen to the floor but obviously does not belong there) again and again. So that on One Special Day per year, we might ask AS A SPECIAL TREAT for other people to change the toilet paper roll or clean up cat barf. What a very, very low bar.
• The way family members, when thinking of Nice Things They Could Do For Us, might choose chores that are not even our chores to do (e.g., a kid deciding to clean the Kid Bathroom, which is already the kids’ job to keep clean), leaving us to further unhappily ponder the way communal chores and in fact ALL chores seem to be seen as our domain, and that despite fairly rigorous teaching on this topic, chores assigned to other family members may have been misunderstood as “helping us with OUR chores” rather than rightfully pitching in with work that belongs to us all.
• The way it might happen in some households, for example mine, that the child who does think about Mother’s Day well in advance without being reminded, and who comes up with a thoughtful gift that is not “doing their own chore they had to do anyway,” is a girl. And while we know this will not be the case across the board, and that there are many thoughtful/considerate sons and many thoughtless/inconsiderate daughters, we might spend time thinking about gender roles in our society, and resenting them.
• The way we might trundle along automatically taking care of others in the household as well as ourselves, and do it as part of our role in the family (just as we might earn money for the whole family and not just for ourselves)—until the one day a year we have Opposite Day, or “Mother’s Day,” and find that EVEN ON THAT ONE DAY the other family members won’t take care of us: that our treat is that they will take SOME care of THEMSELVES. Our treat is that we get some time to take care of our own selves, and we get to take somewhat less care of them.
• The way family members might pat themselves mightily on the back, and expect vast praise from others, for doing on one single day per year the things they ought to be doing regularly.
• The way it turns out SO MANY THINGS work well ONLY because we are reminding or pre-planning—so that, for example, if we deliberately stay out of a task to let others handle it for a day, it can be like one of those stupid “a MAN tries to be the MOM!!” movies, or a Family Circus comic. Perhaps we say that we would love to have garlic-herb bread-machine bread with dinner, and that we will make it ourselves; but the others say “Ah-ah-ah, it’s Mother’s day, so WE will make the bread!!”—but then the time to start the bread machine comes and goes, and we are not nagging/interfering and so we say nothing, and so at dinner there is no garlic-herb bread-machine bread.
• The way we might communicate clearly and reasonably, and not be listened to.
• The way we might have small wants and low expectations, smaller and lower than anyone else’s in the family, and still not have those met.
• The scalding outrage of the crumbs, the CRUMBS, that we might gratefully accept as symbols of appreciation and love. Things that are routine, normal, daily, thoughtful things for us to do for our family members, are special treats for us one day a year, and that’s something we might write glowing reports of for others to read. The fact of this situation. The fact that it is not rare.
I feel like Mother’s Day can be an Exception Proves the Rule sort of day, making many mothers feel much worse, and highlighting the ways in which our usual efforts go generally unappreciated, and the ways in which our culture still kind of sucks. And I had a perfectly fine Mother’s Day for it being Mother’s Day, but it’s Mother’s Day itself I don’t like and don’t know how to cope with but can’t opt out of it either.
