The Trouble with Mother's Day

I hate Mother's Day. Let me present my case:

Exhibit A: The many arts and crafts projects of elementary school, brought home in all their messy glory and presented in hopes of pleasing her--cards, paper flowers, cards, other kinds of paper flowers, and oh yeah, cards. It was stressful. My mother didn't like flowers, never seemed particularly impressed with the cards. I knew it. She knew it. Yet still every year, I was forced to make them, and once made, present them. I pretended she'd be surprised. She pretended she liked them. It cemented in me the feeling that the whole holiday was a fake.

Exhibit B: Real flowers. Everything about Mother's Day is decorated with flowers. It's practically Christmas without a tree or Easter without eggs to not have flowers on Mother's Day. My mom, though, was allergic. Severely allergic. What is the equivalent of giving flowers for Mother's Day? In my child's mind: nothing. And it was all her fault that I failed in my daughterly duty to supply flowers, like she chose her allergies on purpose to disrupt this most sacred of days.

Exhibit C: Traditional Mother's Day Breakfast in Bed and/or Fancy Brunch: I never made her burnt toast or spilled orange juice on her bed while presenting a home made breakfast on a tray, complete with a single rose bud in a vase. She was a woman of unpredictable sleep cycles, but the one thing I could count on is that there was no way I could ever wake up before her. Besides, she just wanted to go to Denny's. So we did. Like so many other days of the week. Denny's, it was our kitchen-away-from-kitchen.

Exhibit D: Mother's Day 2006. I called her, like I'm supposed to, but didn't feel like talking much. Besides, I had plane tickets to go visit in her two weeks. Well, not really visit her. Fly into Phoenix, stay a few days, then borrow a car to drive to a friend's wedding in California. Drive back to her house, drop off the car, fly back to Florida. But I was going to spend some time with her, right?
      Then she said something--I don't remember what--that made me mad. I was proud of myself, though, because I didn't get into it with her. It was Mother's Day after all. I could let it go, be the bigger person, not let her get to me.
       I know I said I love you when we hung up. I know because my grandmother trained everyone in the family to always say it when you hang up. You never know if it's the last time you'll talk to that person again. My grandmother, so morbid, right? But it was the last time I spoke with my mother. Mother's Day 2006. She died four days later.

Exhibit E: Mother's Day 2007-2015. Pure suckage. Sure, there are lots of things out there about the mothers we've lost--sappy, sentimental poems and well meaning memes about how much our mothers loved us. My mother did love me. Fiercely. And I loved her just as much. But since the day my hormones kicked in, it wasn't easy. We weren't flowers and candy and I-love-you-no-I-love-you-more mother and daughter. We were complicated. Or maybe a better word is complex. Probably like a lot of mothers and daughters. But the pressure of Mother's Day to pretend to be all-American Hallmark card versions of ourselves makes me feel every May like I've disappointed her, keep on disappointing her, will always disappoint her because on Mother's Day 2006, I was impatient. I wasn't careful. I can't remember what our last conversation was even about.  All I know is that it was on Mother's Day.

And I hate Mother's Day.