Mother's Day gives us an opportunity to celebrate all things Mom as we reflect on all her courage and insanity.
It's the one time every year, except for maybe her birthday, where we acknowledge that we never meant all the things we have said to her over the past year. It's the day where we deviate from our usual attitude toward our motherly figures - staring at our feet and kicking the dust until her unblinking eyes make us so guilty we frustratingly admit it: "Yes, of course, I love you, Mom. Just stop looking at me."
Once an obligation, I've found myself enjoying finding a way to dote upon my mother more each year. I'm notoriously terrible at selecting gifts for friends and family, but I think I do pretty well to find something both thoughtful and useful on Mother's Day, even though my mother is probably lying through her teeth every time she says thanks through her porcelain doll smile.
Sure Mother's Day is a bit of an over-commercialized affair as even the woman who founded the holiday in the U.S. grew to despise what it became: a day for corporations to make lots of money on the basis that if you don't spend your allowance on mom how can you possibly show her love.
No, it isn't a day in which we need to break the bank, but it does give us an opportunity to recognize the role our mothers played in shaping our lives and moulding us into the upstanding citizens we are today.
My mom sacrificed a lot for me and even more for her four other children. She made choices that I never would have even considered, and neither would my sisters, and it led to a rowdy family of five children. At one point in all of our early years, four of us were under six years of age.
That's a pretty healthy mix of bravery and outright stupidity, but here we all are. We escaped unscathed, though my mother's sense of humour was irreparably damaged. She has done so much for us, and yet, all we've done is destroy her funny bone.
I always thought my mom just didn't have the capacity to laugh at the things that everyone else finds funny, but the more women I know who have children, the more I find that they, too, find the same things funny. It mostly involves young children doing something, anything really, and I call it mom humour. When I've spoken to newer mothers about it, I've heard they didn't think it would happen to them or they didn't realize how fast it would set in.
Hearing these testimonials I've learned to overlook the times my mom has burst out laughing at something silly or immature while everyone else in the room, mostly my siblings, just stare, wondering if after raising five kids, she has any sanity left at all. Perhaps this is the time she has finally cracked, and we'll have to whisk her off to the nuthouse.
However we celebrate Mother's Day, it's an opportunity to reflect on our own lives and how we are a product of a single woman's care and affection. While saying "Happy Mother's Day," we can look at where we are and what we've done. When we do that, we always realize how much we really owe to the person who tied our shoes and told us to stay away from electrical outlets.
Thinking about the course my mother set me upon makes me want to go in for an extra hug to say thank you.
