Mothers Day blues

I hate Mothers Day. That may sound funny coming from a mother of seven- the woman who is nearly always the last left standing on Mothers Day Sunday when they do the countdown for the largest number of children. A woman who has often said that being a mother is the only really fulfulling job she has ever had. But the day always makes me very uncomfortable. It seems like a contrived "Hallmark" kind of holiday; a day to make people feel guilty about how they have spent the rest of the year if they have not been "good" to their mothers (I fall in this category), or to cause others to vainly try to capture in a gift or a card a fitting tribute to someone whose worth is unspeakable.

Some people must like Mothers Day - other than retailers and restaurant owners, I mean, but I have never really talked about it with anyone other than my husband, and that only to say, "Please don't make a pancake breakfast on Mothers Day. It makes us all grouchy and late to church, and it forces me to eat breakfast which I hate to do." He mercifully quit a couple years ago.

I'm sure most of my antipathy to Mothers Day stems from my own fractured relationship with my mother. I struggle daily with how to relate to this woman who bore me, who raised me, who sacrificed years (though not exactly willingly) of her life to rear four children, often (literally)screaming and kicking in the process. This woman who pushed me away when I reached adolescence, who threatened on many occasions to "disown" me and bar me forever from her home, who was too busy to come to my wedding. This woman who was a loving grandmother for 10 years and then cut all ties with her grandchildren in order to pursue "youthful" pursuits. This woman who regularly plays my siblings against me, who reads her Bible faithfully at my sister's house and tells off-color jokes to my children when she visits me - usually staying for less than 24 hours once a year. I don't know what to do with her, or what to do with the fact that I am her flesh and blood, that I have lived my life trying to be anyone but her. I don't know what to do with Mothers Day.

I am nearly as uncomfortable with Mothers Day as a mother myself. I have never enjoyed being the center of attention and I am uneasy with the thought that my children may be acting out of some culturally imposed obligation - I fear that Mothers Day will feel like a burden to them, as it does to me. I have wonderful, obedient, loving children who show me untold kindnesses every day. Those acts are far more meaningful than flowers or a card on a prescribed Day of Obligation. I am considering putting an end to it once and for all today; announcing that I do not wish to celebrate Mothers Day in our family but that I would welcome any tokens of gratitude or love any other day of the year. I suspect everyone would sigh a sigh of relief - though mine would certainly be the loudest.