Mothers Day
“Mothers Day” can be tough, especially if you are a single mom. Mine kinda sucked this year. So I declared Tuesday, May 14, official Do-Over Day.
I woke up unusually early this morning. After tossing about for a bit I decided to greet the day, get up with the sun and try to reset Mothers Day another way. I made some tea, read, wrote, walked the dog, went to the gym, showered and gave myself a facial while the kids and creatures all still slept. When the kiddos stumbled into the living room at around 7am they were shocked to see me up and alert and awake. It was a minor miracle (haha) and a much-needed reframe before a crazy Tuesday.
I heard on the radio this morning that people spend nearly three times more on Mothers Day than Fathers Day. With all due respect to Hallmark and 1800flowers for successfully monetizing yet another holiday, why is everything a competition? It got me thinking about this second Sunday in May we Americans call Mothers Day. It turns out that a woman named Anna Jarvis created the official Mothers Day in the 1900s after her mothers death as a way of honoring the sacrifices mothers made for their children. Jarvis had originally conceived of Mother’s Day as a day of personal celebration between mothers and families. Her version of the day involved wearing a white carnation as a badge and visiting one’s mother or attending church services. But once Mother’s Day became a national holiday, it was not long before florists, card companies and other merchants capitalized on its popularity. While Jarvis had initially worked with the floral industry to help raise Mother’s Day’s profile, by 1920 she had become disgusted with how the holiday had been commercialized and outwardly denounced the transformation.
Perhaps it just goes to show that measuring our worth based on sacrifice isn’t always the best approach. Maybe we can rest on a more natural, graceful common denominator of the shared experience of what simply is. Maybe just give your mom or a special person who has mothered you a flower on your own day. Just because they are awesome. And so are you.
