I find Mother's Day somewhat depressing, because it seems an artificial demarcation in a complex relationship that begins when a being starts growing in another being's womb and ends (somewhat) when the first being dies. (Maybe it's just a hard day for people who lost their mothers young.) I just feel grateful that I was given the gift of having children, so it seems weird that there is a day when they must display gratitude to the giant being who was once central to their world but whom they must definitely have mixed feelings about at times, even as the relationship (hopefully) adjusts itself with maturity.
A birthday is someone else's rite of passage, and it seems understandable to note that. But Mother's Day inserts a "Leave it to Beaver" scrim between the present and what the actual experience of raising a child--or having a mother in day-to-day life--was like. I think the original Mother's Day was intended to make society notice and respect the work mothers do, so much of it hidden. But I like the way society has been evolving, with fathers joining mothers in much of the hidden grunt work, and most modern states providing subsidized day care, and the invention of washing machines and diaper services, etc. I don't feel particularly heroic for having tried to mother my children -- or any more heroic than they are for having developed into the delightful, responsible adults they are despite having been mothered by me. As Philip Larkin put it:
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself."
Except I don't agree with his conclusion. Having children has been the deepest experience of my life (or at least as deep as actually having been a child...), and I always knew I wanted them. When I pick up my new granddaughter, I feel the pure love and joy and lack of complexity that I think Mother's Day represents -- no worries for her future or how I'll fuck her up. And when I see my children, I still feel that rush of happiness and pride (why pride? I didn't make them who they are), but I also feel relief that they have found deeply loving partners whom they love deeply. It is as if the universe hiked me two footballs and I ran them halfway down the field, dodging tackles, tripping but not falling, before lateraling them to more gifted runners who will take them into the end zone. But they could just as easily think of me as the emotional weight they gingerly carried as they ran their own balls -- a truer perception of life and individual struggles.
I don’t want flowers on Mother’s Day, because they are static and they die. I think I’ll risk asking instead for live blueberry bushes in the future. Things that still grow, and provide nourishment; that look sweet but often disappoint, and yet still set off a wonderful thrill in me, just like when I was little: you mean there is free dessert the universe gives? Something to lure my children — and those uncomplicated grandchildren — home...