[blparent] Mother's Day

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

To tell the truth, I'd started to feel a little bit jaded when it came to Mother's Day.  First of all, I never really got along with my own mother, but I was expected to pick out some mushy card every year that told her how great she was--except she wasn't, really.  During the last few years, I tried hard to find cards that simply wished her a nice day, or something else equally as true but bland.  Every year, I wished there could be a Children's Day, when parents were socially bullied into showering praise on their kids whether they wanted to or not--and yeah, I heard it a million times, every day is Children's Day, only it isn't true, not for everybody.  And then there are the endless ads on the radio for jewelry and flowers and chocolates.  Mother's Day was nothing but a contrived, commercialized holiday designed by the retail powers that be to make people spend money on more stuff that nobody needed anyway.  Bah humbug!

And then it happened.  Sarah gave me a construction paper package this afternoon, laced together with yarn and tied in shoestring bows.  She was so excited for me to open the gift, she nearly pulled the paper off herself.  In preschool, she'd made a butterfly refrigerator magnet out of tissue paper and a clothespin, and a handprint in finger paint, framed by Popsicle sticks and foam flowers.  The magnet immediately got the place of honor at the top of the fridge, where cats and kids couldn't reach it, and the handprint will probably be hung in my bedroom, and eventually saved as a prized possession.  Seeing how eager Sarah was to give me the handmade trinkets, and the hugs and kisses that went with them, and how happy it made her to see me gush over everything, I couldn't help laying off the cynicism.

Gerald cooked dinner for me--not a special meal, except that I didn't have to fix it or wash the dishes.  So how were you alls spoiled for Mother's Day?

Jo Elizabeth

"How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong.  Because someday in life you will have been all of these."--George Washington Carver, 1864-1943, American scientist