Word to Your Mother's Day

5-11-09

What could be a more wholesome, uncomplicated celebration than Mother’s Day? At least this is what I used to think. Mother’s Day = flowers, cute kid-made cards, champagne brunches (that’s my kinda motherhood), and burnt toast breakfast attempts by tow-headed kindergartners with gap-toothed smiles. Now I’m more in tune to the complications. Mr. Crud is more bummed about it than me. Throughout the day I catch a glum expression on his mug.

“You okay?” I expect it to be an early onset case of the Sundays.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. It just feels weird.”

“That I’m not a mother?”

“Yeah.”

I chalk up my lack of reaction to the holiday as minor denial combined with minor hope. Maybe next year I will be a mother to a real live crying, pooping baby instead of an idea. Wouldn’t that be something.

Per usual, Facebook shakes me out of my denial with the flood of Mother’s Day-related status updates. All the mothers that I know had lovely days with their kids. Precious moments a-plenty. I feel the now-routine dip into contradiction: Good for you. Why not me?

Mr. Crud and I head to yoga class. “Happy Mother’s Day!” says our teacher as a welcome.

I know that she isn’t herself a mother so somehow this greeting feels okay. “And to you,” I say.

I pat Mr. Crud on the back. I hope I’m pregnant by Father’s Day. I already have a complicated enough Father’s Day what with my dad being dead and all.

We find our places among the yogis and wait for class to begin. Our teacher hands out slips of paper with a chant to honor Krishna’s mother. We clap to a beat. We chant. I know that Mr. Crud enjoys the clapping, that he can lose himself in the rhythm. As we clap I think of the other women and men of the world who may not be lost in the lavender-scented wholesomeness: The other wannabe parents like us who struggle with infertility and miscarriage; the parents of dead children with their wounded hearts; the children of incarcerated women, of abusive mothers, of dead, beloved or hated mothers; and simply those people who have complicated relationships with their mothers. I keep clapping. My wishes are for you, my complicated Mother’s Day compatriots, to find peace today. Just a little, whatever you can handle.

After class, Mr. Crud and I walk on sore, warriored-out legs back home. “Mother’s Day isn’t as simple as it seems,” Mr. Crud says.

“My thoughts exactly.”

“I keep wondering what next Mother’s Day will be like,” he says.

“Yeah, me too.” I wonder if we’ll be able to gross out Peabody with the story of how she was conceived on a Mother’s Day a lot like this one. I hope so.