Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Just Be Nice
On year, my then 20-year old son bought me a very fancy watch for Mother’s Day. In the box was a note scribbled in his tiny handwriting — Ma, can you lend me $20 for gas? I’m broke now. Just kidding, he said. Not really. He and his brother had “Can I borrow twenty bucks?” stenciled on their eyelids. They bat their eyes, I open my wallet. Go read my post about Boy Moms and you’ll understand what I’m saying.
There was a period where Mother’s Day gifts unhappily morphed into Mother’s Day texts. This was really beneath contempt. Here I am, the person who met with your middle school principal 47 times in one year and you send me a text? Where’s my will?
Two of my favorite Mother’s Day presents are in this picture. The World’s Greatest Mother statute given to me by my then 8-year old daughter, purchased for her by my then, now-departed boyfriend, and the little wall plaque given to me by my younger son when he as 15. I look at it every now and then, convinced that he actually read the words and meant them for me. I don’t think about it heaped in a bin at Walgreen’s with a hundred other Mother plaques. I take this stuff so seriously.
In the past many years I have been liberated by the elimination of expectations in my life. I hope for things to happen but don’t construct a whole reality around them happening. It’s not like it doesn’t matter what my kids do on Mother’s Day. It’s that I’m not deciding in advance that Mother’s Day has to play out in a certain way. If I get a text one year and a mink coat the next, that’s fine. A lot of Mother’s Days are ruined because kids don’t measure up to Mom’s unspoken dream of what the day should be like.
What I really want is for them to occasionally say thank you. And it doesn’t need to be on Mother’s Day, although that would be nice.
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
I enjoy reading your blog! Thank you for sharing! I nominated you for a Liebster Award. http://earlylearningplanet.com/2013/05/10/i-love-liebster-awards/