Mother’s Day From the Other Side

So it was Mothers Day, and since Jolie is a Mother she’s biased and isn’t allowed to write about it.

Instead, it’s me, Daughter #2, and while I don’t do Mothers Day the Hallmark way, I think we – the kids – did pretty good this year.

For starters, all five of us are still alive and haven’t committed any major felonies.

You know, as soon as some person commits some terrible crime or arson or fraud, everybody isn’t interested it where the person went wrong. Oh no, everybody wants to know WHO their mother is?! And how could she have been such an incompetent mother that their lovely little angel turned out so wrong?! So really, we’ve already given her the gift of another year without any major public scrutiny. No promises for next year but we’re doing our best for you, ma!

On actual mother’s Day, we don’t do the breakfast in bed thing anymore. For starters, I have no memory of my mother ever consuming breakfast…or being in bed. In fact I do not think I have ever seen her eat. She consumes tea from 7am to 6pm and sometimes has a glass of wine for dinner when she needs a good night of sleep…which is probably the only time I have ever seen her sleep.

Cards are also out. If you’re reading her blog then you probably already know she has more sarcasm than sentiment in her. I guess having five super weird kids has that affect on people. Also, I’ve read quite a few of those Hallmark mothers Day cards and frankly I think that they’re about as heartwarming as mailing her an inspirational cat poster. Home-made cards are only cute when you’re nine and under. Poor lady already has about 300 pieces of craft paper with your little handprint on them. She loves all 300 but I don’t think she wants another one.

Mom, if I’m wrong, and you do want another one, you just let me know. All of us still have two hands and loads of paint, we will wallpaper the house in handprints, you just say the word. But since we tried that a couple of times when we were little and you weren’t too happy about it, we held off this year.

Instead we went to church in the morning and, what are the odds, we happened to be reading the story from the Bible about the evil Herodia and how her daughter tricked Herod into cutting off John’s head so she could bring it to her mother on a platter. And me and Daughter #1 are sitting there in church thinking…. dang, how do you top that for Mothers Day? Wasn’t cool to raise the bar like that right in the middle of Mothers Day.

So, after church I go to Albertsons to get some flowers for my mom. I do this, not so much because she really wanted some flowers, but more because I really love Albertsons, especially on obscure holidays, like Easter or Valentines Day or Mother’s Day. On these days, if you go in around noon, you find about a hundred middle-aged men, frantically trying to buy presents for women.

Last-minute panic shopping is one of the greatest spectator sports. Black Friday, for example, is a good one. But on Mothers Day, you go into Albertsons and there’s frantic men scrambling all over the bakery and the candy shelves and the flower section. They circle the bouquet stand again and again and again, trying to figure out what kind of flowers are “mother flowers”.

And they all have the same look on their faces that’s a combination of determination and the look on the face of a drowning man. And that makes sense, because how do you pick out the thing that says “Happy Mother’s Day”?

Really, how do you find something to convey to your mother how much you really love and respect her? How do you let her know you appreciate all the sacrifices she made that you didn’t appreciate all those years? The bedtime stories. The hard lessons that made you both cry all night. The thousands of elementary school mediocre awards ceremonies that she clapped for. The talents that she encouraged that you didn’t realize for years, that you got from her.

The truth is, you’ll never be able to tell or show her how much you appreciate her, but if she’s your mother, she knows.