Oh, my friend, I hate this day.
I get to be bitter: I don’t have a mother anymore, and I really had a good one, so that sucks. I don’t have kids, and I don’t believe that any of my pets are my fur children because no. Just no.
I do have women in my life who are like mothers to me in many ways. I love you, darlings. And I do love a lot of mothers, so if you are one, and the day feels good to you then happy mother’s day to you! This missive is not for you, my lovies. Collect your sticky kisses and lopsided waffles and enjoy your day.
The rest of you: let’s kvetch a moment, shall we?
Did you know that Mother’s Day, the one we celebrate now, was established in 1908 by a woman celebrating her own deceased mother?
Anna Jarvis told a reporter she was sorry she’d ever started Mother’s Day.
Celebrating her mother’s work, Anna Jarvis pushed hard for a day of recognition. She quit her job at Fidelity Mutual in Philadelphia in 1912, where she’d been the first female editor, in order to work full time on her mission. She worked tirelessly, sending thousands of letters. Finally, in 1914, President Wilson declared it a national holiday.
Anna Jarvis selected carnations to be the flower of Mother’s Day, saying, “The carnation does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart as it dies, and so, too, mothers hug their children to their hearts, their mother love never dying. When I selected this flower, I was remembering my mother’s bed of white pinks.”
Lovely, right?
Then things skidded off the rails.
The flower, card, and candy companies grabbed the idea and ran. To sell more flowers, they promoted red carnations to honor mothers still alive, white ones to honor dead ones. The price of carnations went up thirty-fold in the first six years of the holiday.
Anna said clearly, “As the founder of Mother’s Day, I demand that it cease … Mother’s Day was not intended to be a source of commercial profit.”
Reportedly, she brought at least 33 lawsuits against entities profiteering on Mother’s Day, even threatening to sue Eleanor Roosevelt who sponsored a fund for needy children and mothers, saying Roosevelt’s fund trespassed against Jarvis’s idea of honoring motherhood.
Did it work?
Well, in 2014, it was reported that Americans spent twenty billion dollars on Mother’s Day gifts.
I like flowers, myself. I like sending them. Cards are easy, and cards can transmit difficult feelings. But as Joel Oliphint says in this great article about Anna Jarvis, “Those sappy cards seem harmless, even helpful. But the trickle-down effect of their trite sayings and inflated prices is sneakier than one might imagine. Perhaps Jarvis knew this. It was a losing battle, but maybe she could see the future more clearly than her contemporaries. Maybe she could see that the Hallmarkification of Mother’s Day would actually make it harder, not easier, to communicate a true, deep, and loving appreciation of mothers.”
I guess that’s what this post is about. It’s hard to be honest about this day. How can I be bitter and angry, when over on Facebook so many of my friends are delighting in being a mother, something which is incredibly worthy of delight? How can I be angry at a day honoring women?
But I miss my mom. I’m jealous of people who still have theirs, even people who have trying or impossible relationships with them. I’m heartbroken for one of my best friends in the world who lost her only child twelve days ago. I’m pissed off that she’d already lost a good mom, and now this Hallmark holiday will always serve to stab her right in the heart, twisting the knife, year after year.
Sisters, friends and I have an unofficial uncelebration most years of gathering to raise a glass to our moms. Dead Mother’s Day, we’ve aggrievedly dubbed it, and the bartender at The Alley expects us to be in. We’re not holding it this year—2016 is already too sad to make it sadder. But the next time we do? We’ll raise a glass to Anna Jarvis, a stubborn, childless woman who fought bitterly until the day she died penniless in a sanitarium to honor the memory of her beloved mother and to get others to honor their own in a non-commodified way.
I guess this is my way of honoring my own. Definitely non-commodified — I’m pretty sure I’ll actually lose some readers with this rant.
So let me change the tone here at the end.
Dead Mother’s Day Celebration:
In a spirit of nothing but love, I want to tell you three things about my mother that I adored with all my heart. Then you share some with me about yours, okay?
1. I loved the fact that my little mama unconsciously whistled harmonies to songs in fourths. Not thirds, not fifths. Strangely, fourths. I spent half my life thinking she was tone-deaf before I figured this out.
2. I loved the way she got pink and giggly on two glasses of wine.
3. I loved her battered, callused, dirty, and always barefoot feet. My feet are turning into hers, and sometimes I marvel at their ugliness at the same time I’m impressed with their sheer stubborn sturdiness.
Tell me three things about your dead mother that you loved? (If your mother’s not dead, for the love of god, don’t tell us. Tell her.)
3 things:
1. Her dark sense of humour, which I inherited in droves. Laugh at a funeral? Try “cracked jokes during the eulogy.”
2. Determination. After a condition that should have killed her reared its ugly head, she lived. A full life. Paralyzed, she still found ways to do everything she wanted. To knit and sew. To cook and bake. To walk up the 20 stairs to a good friend’s gallery opening.
3. Independent spirit. She loved us all dearly, but she would have lived a full and complete life without us. She could fix anything. She could travel anywhere. She was as happy being with herself as she was surrounded by family.
I miss her.
Thank you for this.
Drinking a toast tonight!
My Mom made sure we had what we needed and wanted even with money being so tight. Loved her hugs. Loved our talks sitting on her bed. Miss you Mom
1. I loved the way my mother would always hold her pinkie up whether drinking coffee, tea or a bottle of beer. It was such a habit she never noticed and would make me giggle all the time.
2. My mom was so artistic and always embraced and encouraged my creative side. No matter what it was.
3. She was so very honest and could give an insult or reprimand someone in the nicest way they never knew what hit them. Is that wicked? I love it. I love it even more that my husband says I have this gift. Wicked right?
THANK YOU. This is everything I feel today.
1. She LOVED music & dancing to it. She didn’t care if people danced with her or not. She especially loved Roy Orbison, Patsy Cline, Bruce Springsteen & Prince
2. She took me to my first ballet. I was 5 years old and saw Nureyev dance Swan Lake. I’ve loved ballet from that moment forward, and we’d go as often as we could. One of the last gifts I gave her was tickets to see the Bolshoi perform The Nutcracker. It was the only time we did the “this may be the last time, so we are doing X.” I’m so glad we did.
3. She always encouraged my love of reading and asking questions. If I wanted to know something or had a question her most common answer was “look it up.” I HATED that as a kid. I’m so grateful for it as an adult.
I love the way my mother was always there and while we didn’t agree on many things we loved each other very much. When she died I was angry for so long, then I realized that there were many things in her life which made her angry but we both needed to keep going taking care of loved ones, perhaps leaving them better than when they entered our life. And by doing so we became better and happier people. I love you Mom, thank you.
I loved her sarcastic wit. I miss her love of books. I miss her cooking.
Thank you for this post, Rachael. Today has been very hard for me, too.
My Mum is still physically alive, but Alzheimer’s has slowly taken from us the real Mum, the woman she once was. This Mother’s Day is the first since we had to put her into a nursing home, and it is heartbreaking to lose her in this way.
Three of the things that I loved about my Mum, and that I miss terribly:
1. I loved that she would (almost daily) break into song, singing just the chorus of Oh What A Beautiful Morning from Oklahoma! She was the most positive, upbeat person I have ever known.
2. I loved that she knew so much about wild birds and that she found them utterly enchanting. She used to say that if she was ever bedridden, instead of a television, she would want a window overlooking a bird feeder.
3. I loved that Mum would unapologetically sneeze with such gusto that she could be heard halfway down the street. It seemed incongruous that such a well-mannered woman would be so bold about sneezing! (In truth, I didn’t come to love this about her until I was well into adulthood. As a kid, I was mortified by her sneezes!)
My mom challenged me to push harder and do the best I could while bragging about me to her friends. She was fierce when defending me or my siblings. She was a “cock-eyed optimist” and so am I. In the last several months, I’ve really appreciated inheriting that personality trait from her b
Thanks for sharing, Rachael. My Mom died last July. I loved that everything she did, be it cooking, sewing, gardening, she did amazingly well. I loved how she loved building Legos with us. I loved how she always ended phonecalls or visits with “I love you”. Life has not felt quite right since she left, but I know instinctively that she lives on in me snd my three girls.
I now have two lovely daughters I get to spend my days with, but I admit my heart hurts a bit on Mother’s Day every year. My first daughter only lived a week in the NICU after being born quite premature, and that first Mother’s Day after the loss was so, so difficult to get through. I can’t help but reflect on that difficult day now – even with a full heart, I ache for friends that long for children and for whatever reason find their arms empty.
My mother is still with us, but mental illness has robbed us of who she truly is when not ravaged by schizophrenia. Mother’s Day sure can be a tough day.
My Mom was a gentle, kind soul. Rather quiet and not very demonstrative. But she was fierce when it came to protecting her children. A mother bear protecting her cubs. My Mom had a really good sense of humor and I miss her infectious laugh so much. I miss her rough hands when she would touch me. Nothing felt better than when she massaged something that hurt! She always had a sense of optimism and would say that everything would turn out okay; it always does. No matter how sick she was, she would say that there was someone else who had it worse. I miss her voice and I miss her smile. I miss everything about her. She was my best friend and my world. Nothing is ever the same after your lose your Mom.
My mother was…not easy. Not because she was horrible, but because she suffered from mental illness to the extent that she chose to end her own unhappiness nearly 30 years ago. While I think it’s incredibly sad that she felt that was the only way out, I in no way resent her for it. I do miss her, and I know she’d be proud of me and of my son, even if she wouldn’t have been able to find the words to express that pride.
Some cool things about my mother:
She was freakin’ brilliant, and the only person who could even come close to challenging her at Scrabble was my genius brother.
She was a raving intellectual – she taught herself Latin, Greek and Old English so she could read classics in their original language.
She was really, really funny. I just didn’t understand her literary sense of humor until I was about 25.
Thanks for giving us a place to say things like this, Rachael. XO
Haha I totally agree with you. My husband and I stopped doing mothers and fathers day years ago. Our daughter doesn’t acknowledge it either, yay we raised her right. My mother is also dead and I miss her everyday. Sometimes when I look at my feet I see my Mums as well. She was an amazing athlete and all around awesome egg. She also used to give the hardest hugs.
My mother was always there! She never said I could not do something. Money was very tight but we never wanted for anything
I miss her so much three years an to me it was yesterday.
My mother missed out on a lot of time with me, when I was young. I was raised by two wonderful grandmothers, each with their strengths who put their imprints on me, for better or worse. When I was in my early teens, my mother became a bigger part of my life, but in many ways it was too late for bonding. She died when I was 22. Coming from a small family, there are few, if any people, except myself, now at 57, who remember her. While I am happy for my friends who are mothers, I also am aware that life and love is fleeting and encourage everyone to honor and cherish their mothers and others who have guided them, every day.
She sang like a bird
She had a rapier wit
She loved me and her granddaughters with a fierce fire
She drove me crazy and I miss her horribly.
Well said.
I get you, Rachael. I miss my mom so much and wish people would just leave me alone on Mother’s day. My sons and my sister understand but trying to be polite to the other well-wishers takes too much out of me.
I was lucky to have my mom for 60 years. Still sometimes I feel like a lost child without her. I tried to write three things about my mom that I loved but it got too long and sad. She was a geat mom and a still better grandmother to my boys.
I lost my Mum nearly 12 years old and I still miss her every day
Mother’s Day is a tough one for me
But I put a smile on my dial and pretend for my daughter and grandchildren
I miss my Mum’s beautiful blue eyes
I miss her understanding and love she shared with everyone
I don’t think Mum meet many people in her 87 years she didn’t like
But most of call I miss being able to sit with her and chat about everything
The is a saying I have seen which goes something like this
“My Mum taught be everything I know but how to live without her”
My mother died over 20 years ago. I’m older now than she was when she died.
We had a bit of a fraught relationship. I’m not an easy woman to love, and neither was she.
But what I did love about her:
She never stopped wanting to find new things in life.
She soldiered on in spite of living through abuse in her youth, and she always loved babies.
When the chips were down, she was on your side, no matter what. She didn’t always know the right the to do, but by God, she tried. That’s probably the biggest thing I learned from her.
Thanks, Rachel, for this.
My mom thought one potato would feed all of us at dinner; she notoriously made too little food
My mom relied on her good looks and then when she got sick and the doctors had to cut her face, literally in half, she cried, not because she was dying, but that she was no longer pretty
My mom drove me nuts because she honestly was incredibly self-absorbed yet 13 years after her death, I miss her. I miss her laugh, her artistic nature, the fact that she cut her own hair, her complexity. I just miss her.
Mother’s Day doesn’t bother me too much, but it is complicated.
Mom sewed like a dream and gave me her first “fancy, computer” sewing machine for my birthday a month before she died. I can’t sew like she could but I do sew and use her machine and her good scissors.
Mom was addicted to playing Bridge and used to call me every afternoon to recap her triumphs and tragedies even though I never learned how to play. I did, however, know when to sympathize or celebrate along with her. Those calls used to drive me nuts; now I’d give a lot for just one more.
I always swore I wouldn’t turn into my worrier of a Mom but I am although I’m better at holding it in than she was. She was also the family story remember-er. She told wonderful stories of her family to us when we were kids and to my kids and nephew. Happily I listened so I can pass on at least a few of the stories so our past isn’t totally forgotten. We always meant to write things down, but didn’t.
Mother’s Day is hard for me because I feel so much guilt about not missing mine. It’s been 4 years since she’s passed and I’m still so angry with her. My mother loved us fiercely. Protected us from harm. Stood up for us. She was an excellent cook and taught me how to knit and crochet. But she was jealous of her children. Resentful of what we had, of what she and my father had given us. She came across as my biggest fan but was also my biggest bully, building me up only to tear me down. Luring me back with kindness and love, then trying to “break” me with violence.
I know she did her best. And maybe some day that will be enough.
To those of you who miss your mothers, I envy you.
My Mum gave me music, which she admittedly put too much pressure on me for but no one was more proud of my accomplishments. She gave me knitting and craft which I didn’t embrace until I became a mother myself. She never met anyone she wouldn’t hug if she thought they could use one and had the biggest heart. She just wasn’t able to carry all of the burdens she tried to shoulder.
I’ve lived far more of my years without her than I had with her and as of last month I am older than she got the chance to be. She would have made a lovely grandmother, I think.
My husband is facing his first mothers day without his Mum who we lost to cancer last November. Our son’s only grandmother. They’re both stiff upper lip kind of guys so I don’t know what their thoughts are today, but I miss her. She was the one to help me choose my wedding dress 20 years ago.
Thanks for the space to share this–I read every comment. It helps. You’d think after nearly 40 years my heart would have plenty of thick scar tissue over the place where my mother was, but not so. I may take off for the wilderness every year from now on. Between grieving mothers and children, it’s just too hard.
My mother’s chi was so strong that she blackened mood rings.
Her love for me was so fierce, she taught me from the earliest age that no one, absolutely no one, was responsible for me but me.
She fought to make the Clark County school district let me into Algebra I. Apparently the good Mormon girls of 1970s Las Vegas didn’t do math.
I’ve finally decided to let that day she fell out of the sky be what it was, a moment that changed our lives forever. The weight of pretending it was anything else is just too heavy. I wish for every motherless child, every grieving mother to grow peacefully comfortable with our losses. At our own damn speed, and in our own damn way.
Thanks for letting me share.
Mother’s Day was never a favorite holiday in our home when .i was griwing up. My mom was bipolar, and mean/angry on top of that. It did not matter if there were bouquets or paper cups with daisy’s or paper plates with outlines of hands or feet or sillouettes. They all got smashed, ripped, thrown away. And we would get berated for not trying harder. I was lucky to marry a man who loved me and our children and helped me to learn to love Mother’s Day. I loved svery little thing my 3 daughter’s made me and cherish them to this day. My mom oassed away in2012, an unhappy sick woman who never received the treatment she needed to live a full life
I’m jealous of those of you who had fabulous mothers, even though they’re dead now. My mom and I have been estranged for 6 years now. My sisters don’t communicate with her either. But even though she was horribly complicated and did some unforgivable things, she wasn’t a completely bad person. I can still think of three things I love(d) about her.
1) I loved how she’d sometimes laugh uncontrollably until she peed her pants.
2) I loved how she made Christmas so Christmassy – it looked, smelled, sounded and tasted Christmassy.
3) I loved that she took care of orphaned baby groundhogs all summer and released them in the fall.
You and I have talked about this before – in fact, other than knitting (which comes to me from my mother and her mother & HER mother), I would say I get my friendship with you, virtual though it is, was cemented over this very talk, how stupidly terribly hard it is to be without them.
I am a mother myself, and I got a charming handmade gift from my daughter today – no companies were furthered in exploitation, card-wise, because she made it all for me by hand. So that is the one bright spot for me in a day with which I struggle because I am still so angry that she is gone.
Things I loved about my mother, Lynn:
* her giggle. She had an infectious, mischievous giggle with just a hint of evil to it – just enough to keep it from being saccharine.
* her indomitability. God, she was impossible to restrain once she decided on something, and woe betide they who tried to stand in her way.
* how not once, not ever, did she allow me to doubt her absolute & enduring love for my brother and me. She said it, often, and showed it, too. No matter how bad things got, she said, we could always, always come home.
I miss her so viscerally sometimes, I feel it physically in my sternum, like I might fold inward around the hurt of it. But then I think of her saying to me, “I’ll love you ’til I’m dead, and afterward, too.” And I can breathe again.
Love to you, friend.
My mom died and 1973 so it’s been a Long time. She was a loving mom to me and my three sisters. She died a long drawnout death that my dad tried to protect us from. Lots of confusing emotions are left from that time. Two years ago I lost my youngest daughter she was 32 years old and died instantly in a car crash.
I feel like mothers day should be a time to celebrate all the strong women who have in role models to us along the way.
Hugs to you Rachel I always enjoy reading what you have to say! Thanks for providing a forum for us to express our feelings today
I loved that my mom had her pilot’s license back in the 1940’s. My father did as well, tho,after my brother and I came along(we were both adopted when my parents were in their late 30’s) they never flew.
I loved that my mother had a mouth like a sailor at times and a raunchy sense of humor.
I loved her potato salad. No one has ever been ever to duplicate it even with the recipe. She almost always made it when I would visit.
She was a woman ahead of her time. I often wonder what she would have done if she had been born at a different time and to a different mother. My grandmother was a mean woman, especially to my mom.
My mother was a narcissist who should never had children. She died in 2005 and wasn’t speaking to my brother or me at the time. Today, and every Mother’s Day, I feel relief and peace and focus solely on my kids and close friends.
1. She was dyslexic and had ADD, and so she spoke her own language. It’s hard to describe, but she would say things like “pass the flies” for chicken wings, or “you know, the….[indescribable noise and motion]” for words that eluded her. It was funny but could be frustrating for all. I thankfully spoke her language. My father never tried.
2. She had a way of doing things “just so.” It didn’t always immediately make sense. But there were reasons. She hid bar soap in the linens. She would put wax potpourri in the freezer. Mustard with the hair products. But the bar soap was to keep the linens fresh, the wax was to keep the fragrance oils longer. (The mustard was an ADD mistake.) She’d organize things for camping and could go at a moment’s notice, but didn’t always know where her underpants were.
3. She had a wicked sense of humor. You didn’t always know she was joking. She could be subtle. For example, she had a planter with lettuce and tomato plants and she put a little pig in it. Why? It’s a BLT plant. Nobody would have known that but her, I asked point blank because I knew it had to be something. And she had this great little secret smile when she said it.
People are probably tired of me telling the same old stories about my mum, but I can’t help it. Because she died when I was 9, I never really got to know her – she was just ‘there.’
Now I have 2 kids of my own, and I have the family that raised me after she died, but I still miss my mum, perhaps even more so because I never got a chance to know her.
1. I loved the beautiful flower arrangements my mother made as a florist. I remember helping her as a child, playing in babies breath. The smell of roses always reminders me of her.
2. I love the way she put everyone first. Always before herself, even when she was tired she was giving away I love the way she put everyone first. Always putting herself second, even when she was tired. Even if it meant she was giving away her last cent.
3. I love how she would dance in the kitchen and her slippers. She would embarrass me in front of my friends or my boyfriend, cooking Banquet chicken in the oven, and singing “I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight” and flapping her arms like chicken wings.
wow, this post really dredged up some buried feelings about my mom. we had a tough time, especially towards the end, but she was never abusive or mean. she loved my sister and me … and she’s been gone for over 13 years.
1. She had your back … she’d fight like a tiger for her family and friends.
2. She could detect fakes and liars in seconds. I learned to respect her opinion on new boyfriends.
3. She made sure we had what we needed … even if she didn’t.
One of my mother’s great gifts to me was her sense of style.
‘Nuff said.
While my mother is technically still alive her mind is gone and I miss her very much, even though she could be a pain in the ass.
1. She taught me to sew and to knit and would always help me with projects. Even during my teenage years when we could barely speak to each other we would spend hours laying out a pattern so the plaid would line up .
2. She loved being a grandmother. She took my daughter for gelato at 11:00 in the morning once and when I was surprised she said “grandmas get to do that”.
3. She let her hair go grey (after years of dyeing it) before her own mother let her hair go grey. There was one Christmas when my mother had grey hair and my grandma had brown – it was such a funny combination!
My family is low-key with these holidays, but my husband and two kids made a nice dinner for us and that’s just what I wanted.
I hugs you, beautiful daughter on this day. much love, sweets.
There were plenty of things that bugged me about my mother, but some things I loved were: how she baked Finnish cardamom bread every Saturday and then gave most of it away (people in the town she lived in still talk about that, and she’s been gone 12 years). I loved the way we could make each other laugh, and I loved the way she always did her nails on Sunday evening. As she lay dying she still had the prettiest hands and nails. ( and now, I’m crying)
I feel the same way that you do – except that I do have 2 human kids, and I do consider my dogs as my kids too! But Mother’s Day is not the same without my mom. Ever. And I don’t really want to celebrate it, but it disappoints my kids.
My mom always managed to give advice without criticizing – “you know what worked for me when you kids were little, was to let you run around the table once between every spoonful of food, but you always had to be sitting in your chair while chewing.” (We are all ADHD!)
I could always sit in silence with my mom and never feel pressured to babble on.
She was never impressed with wealth and fame and didn’t fawn over people to impress them. She also never looked down on people poor or with hoarder houses.
I miss her all the time.
My mother sewed most all of my clothes that weren’t hand-me-downs until I learned to sew. I adored those outfits (After she died, I found a wicker picnic basket full of the smallest leftover scraps of fabric from those).
A week before my 50th birthday, I was going through the last big box of her things and came across a tattered box that once held chocolates. Inside, I found a different kind of sweets: cards and letters that friends and family had sent her the month before my birth and during the few months after. She never shared these with me during her life, but there they had were.
My mother learned to fly with the Civil Air Patrol during WW2. Also, she conquered the adult section of her public library as an elementary student and impressed upon me the importance of reading everything and anything (and of having a library card). Both of these convinced me that the sky really was the limit when it came to what women and girls were capable of doing.
My mom died 17 years ago at the age of 48. I was only 21 at the time. Mother’s Day every year since then has sucked. Even though I’m now a mom of five girls I still can’t find it in me to celebrate with her gone. There are so many things about her that made her amazing and that I miss.
The way she quietly sat and listened to everything I said. Without interrupting and without offering advice until asked was a great attribute that I don’t possess.
The way she made sure that my brother and I never missed out on an adventure or an opportunity because she was disabled.
And most of all the sound of her voice. She was the so soft spoken but always made the biggest impact with every word.
Saying I miss her doesn’t even begin to describe the depth of the hole left in my soul since she’s be gone.
Yeah…. Mother’s Day sucks.
I miss my mom’s ability to visit me and spread her belongings across my whole house, always leaving things behind.
I miss her enthusiasm for projects, hers and other people’s.
I miss her starting projects that she never finished.
I miss her hugs most of all. Big squeezers.
Big squeezes to all of you, I hear my mom’s advice in my heart all the time, “I’m sorry that I’m gone, this was not my plan, but you can do this and I love you. ”
Damned ovarian cancer can kill my mom, but it can’t kill love.
My mom was generous to people in need in a huge and personal way. She didn’t just give someone a buck or two and leave; she’d take them to lunch, help them with their court cases, slip them the cash they needed to get something that could turn their life around. People tell me I’m generous when I do something small and I just shake my head; I’ve got nothing on her. She was loud and a little graceless and absolutely fierce. I miss her.
Hope you’re there at The Alley next year; it’s one of my favorites.
What a fabulous post. Thank you for injecting humor into what many of us feel. I lost my mother 5 years ago to Alzheimer’s, and since I am a mother myself, I feel both pain and happiness on this day. Always glad when it’s over! Anyway…my mom…taught me to survive! I can hear her saying “pick yourself up by your bootstraps and move on”! I can bake and knit because of her as well! Best memory? How she taught me to love.
So interesting, I always thought our Mother’s Day came from the British one, which I believe was a Mothers Peace Day to object to war.
Three things about my dead mother: I loved the way she would put Vaporub on my chest when I was a little girl with a bad cold, she was a good baker and cook and craftswoman, and she was patient although I didn’t appreciate it at the time.
Though Mother’s Day has never particularly bothered me, my mother’s birthday is always harder, I still love this sentiment. It’s so hard not to be jealous and bitter when people are complaining about their moms, or even bragging about them. Mine’s been gone almost 14 years.
But… there are many things that I loved, and still love about her.
I loved her sense of fearlessness. She was never afraid to try something new, learn to do something, or generally jump in with both feet.
I loved that anything could be breakfast. Spaghetti and hashbrowns? Sure. Ice cream and brownies. Definitely.
Most of all, I loved that she was able to raise me to be the strong, independent woman that she herself was never able to be. She raised me to be a better woman than she was in many ways. I hope, should I ever have a daughter, that I’m able to do the same.
Three things.
Pansies. I remember being 2-AND A HALF, kneeling in the grass, my knees all tickley, as she pulled a seed packet out of her pocket.
I can still hear her voice explaining that seeds were flower babies and we had to tuck them in, cover them up with their soil blanket and when they woke up from their nap, they would pop up out from under their blanket. “And just like you, every day they will grow more and change in little and big ways and just get prettier.” I asked why she liked this flower best. She said it was because this flower let everyone see it’s face and every one of their faces made her smile.
Licorice. My mother loved black licorice. Loved it. We were conditioned at an early age that the Easter Bunny left black jellybeans for Mom in our baskets. The reason they weren’t left in her basket? Jellybeans get lonely and like to be with their friends. Which is why I started eating jellybeans two at a time. I still do.
I love that she shared something she really liked, knowing that if I liked it too, there would be less for her. And I loved that I surprised her when I got old enough to have money of my own, that I bought her licorice she “didn’t have to share”.
Dresses. Mom made all our clothes. People would stop us on the street and ask where she got our clothes. She was incredibly creative with the limited resources of the times.
I remember a heart patterned long sleeved, dropped waist dress with a Peter Pan collar trimmed in red rickrack with a matching red rickrack heart over our heart. All three of us girls wore them for our yearly kid portrait.
I stopped in my tracks 20 Years later when I saw the same fabric in a local fabric store.
My sister was stunned when she unwrapped a miniature version of that dress that Christmas for my two year old niece.
When my Mom passed, the grief would hit in huge waves, knocking me breathless. It was my mantra of “3 things” that kept me going- 3 things I was thankful she showed me or taught me,giving thanks and feeling grateful. Each time it did this, I realized so much of her was still with me and always would be.
Our Mother’s Day was a little while ago and has a different origin but like you I struggle with it because it feels so lopsided. So here are three things about my darling Mum:
– the rare occasions when she’d get a little tiddly and become very very giggly.
– that she always made my then boyfriend now husband a chocolate cake when she came to visit me at university but nothing for me (luckily he shared, there’s a reason I married him)
– the time when I scored free tickets to the Royal Festival Hall through work, phoned her up and asked her to come to London to go to a concert and she got dressed up and hopped on a train for two hours to have supper with me and hear some beautiful music
Happy rememberings – thank you x
Her mispronunciations of common words
Her amazing hugs
Her smell
I miss her every day and she’s been gone for 20 years. It still takes my breath away. In her honor I celebrate Christmas every year – it was her favorite holiday – even though she died far too young 2 days before Cristmas.
I miss you Mom – each and every day – I wish you were here to see what wonderful persons your children have grown into; to love on your grandchildren; to meet your great (step) grandson Oliver.
I try to live my life to make her proud.