One Mother's Opinion of Mother's Day

Mother’s Day. It’s a day created to celebrate mothers everywhere. A day for Hallmark cards and candy and flowers and taking mom out to lunch (or dinner). Giving her handmade creations from school, sticky with paste or glue, covered in stickers or glitter or macaroni. With sentiment written in a child’s hand and from a child’s heart. Doting on her, and maybe even waiting on her hand and foot. Giving her that perfect something she’s been wanting…

Or is it?

Well, yeah – cards are nice. Lunch is good, too; every momma needs to be fed, right? Flowers are pretty, but they don’t last. Candy is good, but it makes us fat. (OK, it makes me fat.) Presents are thoughtful, but really – who can afford these prices?

I, however, am a particular fan of the Gummy Lump. If you’ve read Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, then you know what I mean. For those who don’t, I’m talking about the things your child creates and gives you. The glue-sticky things I described above. Those things that give you a gummy lump in your throat. Mr. Fulghum explains it much better:

Once it was a shoebox, decorated and given to me by the oldest child. Then it became a repository of other relics of childhood given to me by the younger children. The shoebox became my treasure chest in time. Its components are standard: Three colors of construction paper – pink and red and white – faded now, aluminum foil, orange tissue paper, several paper doilies, three kinds of macaroni, gumdrops, jelly beans, some little white hearts (the kind that taste like Tums) with words on them, and the whole thing held together with a whole lot of white library paste, which also tastes like Tums.

He goes on to say how the whole thing has gone “kind of moldy where the jelly beans and gumdrops have run together.” He says it is still “sticky in places” and that most of it is now “more beige than red and white.” But more importantly, it contains all the written love from his children for Valentine’s Day and, I would guess other holidays as well.

I think this meshes nicely with what I am trying to say. Yes, I admit it. I think it would be awesome to have an inexpensive tablet of some kind (or a smart phone) so I can check email, peruse Facebook, keep my appointments on some kind of cool calendar feature that will ping loudly with reminders, play a mindless game here and there, keep track of my contacts and be generally “hooked in” to modern technology. I think it would be bliss to receive a spa package, massage, mani-pedi, facial – whatever! I am, after all, a girl last I checked. (These things would be made all the cooler if they were spontaneous and not attached to any particular “holiday” or “Hallmark Holiday” though.)

But even better than any of that? My hubby telling me he loves me at any time, and for no particular reason. My kiddos writing me little notes that they leave on my bedside. I love you mom! You’re the best! I’ve found notes and pictures under my pillow. I’ve found notes in my purse. I’ve got a collection of beautiful pictures and drawings (and yes, they are beautiful because my children made them) in boxes to save for posterity and sentiment.

So when this Mother’s Day passed, and my hubby apologized for not getting me anything, I meant it when I said it did not matter. My son made me a card. My daughter hugged me as hard as she possibly could (which is pretty hard, actually – ouch) and told me she loved me. My family took me out to lunch. And then we all went to the local fishing hole where they (and a friend) fished for a couple hours and I sat back in a chair and read a book in the midst of all of the beauty around me.

I call that an amazing Mother’s Day.

Just my humble opinion – but those things are gifts.

TTFN
JMS

Robert Fulghum Official Website: http://www.robertfulghum.com/