I’m off to Pennsylvania this weekend to pay tribute to my mother, my mother’s mother, and (unavoidably) the NJ Turnpike Authority.
Ah, Mother’s Day. What started as a day to honor thy mother with flowers and loving sentiment has morphed into another opportunity to equate love with consumer goods. What are with these Mother Day Gift Guides that tout luxurious cosmetics and jewelry as the perfect way to show Mom you love her? And do you have a choice but to abide by these profiteers? “Sorry, Mom. I don’t celebrate Mother’s Day out of a personal conviction that it’s gotten too commercial. What’s for dinner?”
Hal Runkel, a national parenting expert, is calling for the abolishment of Mother’s Day: “There should be no such thing as Mother’s Day… While it sounds great to have a day when we recognize and appreciate our moms who do so much in our families, what about the other 364 days”? What do you mean, “What about the other 364 days?” Those are the days we slowly strangle Mom’s soul.
I guess Hal Runkel is beholden of the philosophy that every day should be Mother’s Day. You know what else every day should be? Earth Day. Christmas. My birthday. The day the bass players took over the world. New Year’s Eve. The fact is, if every day was Mother’s Day, the tenuous balance of trust and respect in the mother-father-child relationship would be profoundly usurped. The kids should serve mom breakfast in bed, every day? The father should cook, clean, and pretend not to resent the motherhood that turned his bride into a mess of stretch marks and nerves, every day? Fresh flowers and chocolates for Mom, every day? What kind of a “parenting expert” would advocate such insanity?
And even more, what kind of a mother would want her children to spoil her, every day? A bad mother. Good mothers like mine derive great satisfaction from fussing over their offspring; we should only deprive our mothers of that fussing for one day a year.
