Other's Day

So many ads for candy, perfume and special Mom’s Day brunches. The supermarkets hike up their prices for festive bouquets. Facebook is replete with people posting photos of themselves as babies and kiddies with their mothers. Or images of their mothers, some of whom have left us. People “like” all the posts. My dear mother is not here for me to see, speak with, give a present to. She and my father said that Mother’s Day and Father’s Day were made up holidays and they didn’t really pay attention to them. As children, though, we wanted them to be more important than our parents did and we labored over construction paper cards and flowers made out of pink tissues and glue. And then, yes, later on, we wanted her to have necklaces, more expensive makeup and fancier cards. It actually made more of a difference to my sisters and brothers and me than it did to my mother. She said her children were her jewels and we were the only presents she wanted. We say that each of us had a different mother because she paid attention to us individually, in her unique way.

She was  a remarkable, accomplished woman and the older I get, the more I realize how much she achieved in her relatively short life. She was witty, intellectual, sharp, loving and aware. She wasn’t really sentimental, though; not for her scrapbooks filled with newborn’s footprints, Valentines with macaroni hearts, hundreds of birthday and anniversary cards or crushed flowers from long-forgotten bouquets. She snipped her picture out of any photo she didn’t like and although I do have a few cards and letters she sent me over the years, they are short and sweet, not long and chatty. She loved talking to us more than doing any housework and if the dishes didn’t get done, who cared? They’d be there the next day. We were always more important than vacuuming, shopping or the Ladies’ Auxiliary (she said that “we weren’t joiners” — probably because there were so many of us and we were our own built-in club). She had loads of time to chat, hear the day’s news, talk about politics (but it was a no-no to discuss politics outside the family). She could have done so many things in her life and it amazes and humbles me to think of what she gave up to have and worry about my siblings and me. I don’t particularly care one way or another about Mother’s Day and am not interested in telling other people’s mothers to have a happy Mother’s Day. She was the only one I cared about and I wish I could tell her how marvelous she was to me.