It's Enough

Let's be honest. I dreaded writing a post for Mother's Day. I knew things were going to be -- interesting -- when I came home from an all-day writing workshop yesterday afternoon and had to reassure Oliver that it was all right if he had forgotten to take the money Dad had given him and walk around the corner to our neighborhood store to buy me a present. A few hours later, Henry came home from his last baseball game, angry and upset that he had only played two innings and that they had lost the game and baseball was over and he sucked as a player and I don't want to talk about it anymore, Mom. An hour or so after that, The Husband came home and I overheard some tight whispering and then Oliver stormed down the hall to his room.

Reader, why the hell is there this silly day that we call Mother's Day? Why, why, why are we set up, year after year to engage in this charade of celebration? As much as I love and am grateful for my mother, I can't remember a single Mother's Day as a child. Did we do enough? Did Dad buy appropriate gifts for her? Was she happy? Did she feel taken for granted? Sigh.

I woke up this morning to texts from both of my sisters, Melissa and Jennifer, whom I rarely write about or mention on the blog. They are both terrific mothers, and we are probably better friends now, at the ages of 39, 47 and 49 than we ever were as children. We share the same brutal sense of humor and realized that even now at our advanced ages, we are hard put to appreciate enough our own mother and feel appreciated enough by our own children. We won't even talk about The Husbands. What the hey?

I woke up this morning to no presents, but The Husband made me my favorite breakfast and gave me perfectly gorgeous flowers. It's enough. It's enough. It's enough.

Happy Mother's Day to the rest of you. Now let's begin again tomorrow, my favorite day of the week.