Mother's Day

Yesterday in her daily email to me, Mom related a story I had not heard before. She wrote: I was thinking about long ago on a Mother’s Day how Mary Blythe and I wanted to get something for our Mother...We had no money and hunted all over the house, under chair cushions and in drawers looking for pennies until we had some money. Mary Blythe said she had a wonderful idea of what to give Mother and was so excited. “Mother will just love this,” Mary Blythe said. She bought a big pink crepe paper rose to fasten on the round part of the telephone. You talked into this huge rose. Oh, how wonderful! What a perfect present. But the rose did not stay on the telephone for very long. Mary Blythe and I just couldn’t understand why the big paper rose was lost so soon and why Mother wasn’t hunting for it.

My mother is the most gracious person I know when it comes to receiving gifts. Perhaps she learned this because of, or in spite of, experiences with her own mother. Having a close relationship with her and being a mother myself, I don’t need a special day of the year to celebrate motherhood. I suspect my Mother feels the same way. However, I have to admit that I liked thinking about what I might send Mom for Mother’s Day this year. Knowing she wasn’t expecting a gift and would be happy with just a phone call, made me determined to surprise her with something that would please her. I had just been for a visit and replenished her wardrobe. I know I can no longer send her a favorite book because her eyes are not good. So I opted for a DVD movie for entertainment. She loved it and thanked me over and over again

I must admit I felt excited when the UPS driver came up the driveway Friday afternoon and delivered a large box with my name on it. Something I had not ordered. A surprise gift for Mother’s Day, for me? It felt like Christmas. I loved opening the card and reading the kind words my son wrote to me. The elegantly packed gift basket of teas and biscuits and a variety of specialty items to go with afternoon tea are just right to satisfy the Anglophile in me. My family knows that and especially my son.

I know Mother’s Day has become another one of those “Hallmark holidays” that fills the shops with greeting cards, your email inbox with advertisements for sending flowers, and boosts restaurant sales. I remind myself that this is the American way, part of our culture. The librarian in me had to research Mother’s Day on the Internet to learn that it’s been an American holiday since Woodrow Wilson’s presidency almost 100 years ago. Anna Jarvis wanted to honor her mother after her death and proposed the holiday in very specific terms. It was to be the second Sunday in May but to be called Mother’s Day. She was specific about the location of the apostrophe; it was to be singular possessive, for each family to honor their mother, not a plural possessive commemorating all mothers in the world. Reading further I learned that only ten years after Mother’s Day was established it became so commercialized that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of her own holiday and fought the abuse of the holiday for the rest of her life. She critisized the practice of purchasing greeting cards, which she saw as a sign of being too lazy to write a personal letter.

I am glad to have marked another Mother’s Day in my life. This year I learned about the story of two little girls searching for pennies to buy my grandmother a gift. My son’s card is tucked away to reread and savor. Most of all I hope that next year I will have the same dilemma of what to get my Mom for Mother’s Day that will please her.