My friends know that I've always had an ambivalent relationship with Mother's Day, maybe due to my imperfect relationship with my mom. In my 20's, it was a consistent reminder that my mom and I were often at odds, and we would never reach a point of seeing eye-to-eye. We lived a quasi-awkward detente for so many years. It was also a reminder that the idea that I would one day be a mom was slipping away. Don't ask how I knew this in my 20's -- some things you just know in your marrow so deeply that it's how you cope with a reality not-yet-real. Sure enough, my thirties rolled around, and I cared less how it affected me as a childless person. By that time, I came to realize that so many of my friends also had conflicted relationships with their mothers -- like attracting like, I suppose.
There's something about it that kind of rankles me in a million ways -- for all of us who are childless whether by choice, or by biology, or just by circumstance. For all of us who had difficult relationships with either our mothers or our children (or both). For all of us who feel that a woman's worth isn't dependent upon being a mother, but simply by our existence -- that we are whole humans regardless of our status as a progenitor or a caregiver.
The year Mom died, it was so very raw -- even more so for my cousin, who had lost her mother just days before, who had one of those great relationships that I would never have had. I remember standing in the craft store and seeing all those "make this for Mom!" displays and thinking, "Just another stabbing reminder that I don't have a mother anymore." I don't even remember what we did that day -- I think just treated it like any other Sunday, floating in a cocoon of emotional goo and waiting to birth into the butterflies we should become.
The next year, the grief was still raw, though lessened somewhat by time, and I was angry. I wanted all those damn advertisers to hurt as badly as I did. I never related to M'Lynn Eatonton as much as I did in that moment. I wanted to deliver a bouquet of throat punches and weiner jabs to all of them. I wanted to deliver a box of chocolate laxatives to them. Take them to a lovely dinner where the food had been salted with my tears.
Last year was a bit better but not by much. On top of that, by that point, I had suffered two more jarring losses. I had to cantor that morning at church, and it was almost too much. Odd -- the morning after Mom's death, I was in the choir, singing as if my own life depended on it, and now two years later, I suddenly can't? I made it through, but I went home that day and in our ministry scheduler, marked myself as unavailable on the 2nd Sunday of May from now on.
This year ...... I don't know. Part of me wants to wrap the blankets around my head and pretend the day just doesn't exist. Part of me wants to go to the cemetery and talk to Mama...... Part of me wants to smash things. I hear the ads and such (mostly on radio because I spend so much time in my car) and I roll my eyes and groan at the pandering and commercialism. I silently smile smugly at the knowledge that Anna Jarvis herself regretted establishing the holiday because of the commercialization.
I'll always be ambivalent and probably always a little angry. And sometimes, that's okay too.
I think Anna Jarvis would be okay with that.
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