Where the White Things Are: The day for mothers

Mother's day is complicated. It catapults so many mixed up emotions into the air all at once, I get into a tangled twisted muddle. Normally I am content to do the mom gig and all that goes with it--currently, everything I do goes unnoticed and is taken for granted. But stupid ole mother's day comes along and makes me want things, like a little extra appreciation and love. During the week leading up to mother's day, I ran my own annoying personal gauntlet of emotions regarding the idea of mother's day. It was exhausting, but I made it out of the dark cavern little by little and now I am safely on the other side, back in the open air, back in my usual position behind the spotlight. I realize that my issues with mother's day are tame and lame compared to what many others go through, but that doesn't make them any less valid. I have a loving husband and three healthy kids; I shouldn't complain about them not "caring enough" on mother's day, whatever that even means. But I feel that way and it's ok. I get over it and we move on.

To illustrate my emotional journey, here are journal excerpts from the week-- some more angsty and embarrassing than others. Grumpy and circuitous as many of these thoughts and feelings may seem, they are still real and this year I tried to give myself permission to feel them and then let them go whether they were resolved or not. I read my blog post from last year's mother's day and felt immediately humbled--this year was automatically better than last year, but even though last year wasn't a great mother's day in the traditional way and lots of not-fun things happened, I was able to rise above my...self and it ended up being kind of a transforming experience. This year I felt none of that divinity, and I worried that I had backtracked down into the pit of lame unfulfilled hopes. Those feelings made for some rather colorful journal entries...

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Placing expectations on someone else is dangerous because it's me placing my satisfaction and happiness in unreliable hands, when so far I've learned that the only safe way to guarantee my well-being is to take care of myself. I feel like I should be able to be satisfied with the dull daily tasks (making dinner, caring for our kids and home, etc.) without external gratitude. But I also crave that external appreciation! But I don't want to crave it! But I do!

Maybe that's my real beef with mother's day: the whole point of the day seems to be that "we don't thank or appreciate mothers/women enough, so we invented this day where we'll try to cram a year's worth of maternal appreciation and gratitude into one day so we don't feel as bad for taking our moms for granted the rest of the year." So when my family fails to try to make mother's day nice for me, it feels like they officially don't care about me any of the time. AM I A TOTAL HORRIBLY SELFISH CYNIC??? I think I might be, at least where mother's day is involved. I just don't understand why my family doesn't take advantage of an official chance to show love to me! It feels like a slap every year. "Mom/wife, you aren't forcing us to do anything for mother's day so why would we do it?"

{Low point, hah! Don't worry--it got better.}

Friday, May 8, 2020

Mother's day is just an impossible catch-22. I want some sort of "special treatment" (not sure what exactly) but don't want to have to ask for it but if I don't ask for it I won't get it, but even if I do ask for it, there's still no guarantee that I'll get it. And asking creates hope and hope breeds expectations, which are pointless since they rarely are met in the way I hoped. Nothing gets done if the women don't make sure it's happening. Hence my mother's day woes.

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Today was Mother's Day. Ho hum. For some reason the day felt so slow and long! We had home church, Rose gave me the card she made this week, Amber and Jay made me cards and gave them to me, we went on a windy family walk, and took my traditional mother's day picture all before 10:30am. Jeff and I looked at each other and said "now what?"

After lunch, I read a little and watched a show with Jeff while the kids played outside. Then I read more. Rose spent a solid 45 minutes this afternoon playing with my hair and taking pictures of all the many creative twists and braid combos that she created. I continued to read while she worked.

Jeff asked if there was anything special I wanted for dinner, but since it was Sunday, he wasn't exactly going to go buy anything and I wasn't in the mood to dream up something my sensitive stomach could handle that Jeff could also make, so we had leftovers for dinner--burrito bowls. I helped with the minimal cleanup. After dinner, I read some more and played piano. Then family prayer and big kids' quiet time/Amber's bedtime.

So, Mother's Day this year was not terrible. It was not especially special, but it wasn't an actively bad/hard day like the past few mother's days have been, so that was something. I managed to keep a tight hold on my expectations and hopes, and it helped me survive the day.

Jay's card was on a sheet of lined paper (he thinks that the holes in lined paper are supposed to go on the right, so it looked like he wrote on the back of a piece of notebook paper). Since I am always drilling the kids on saying thank you, I think Jay confused a love note with a thank you note when he wrote his mother's day message to me--cutie. In pencil, his minimally punctuated "card" said:

"Mommy thank you for everything that you have ever done for me out of the 4 billion options for mom you are by far the best. Thank you --Jay. Also when you need it I will keep the girls busy for 1 hour.

Rose made a pop-up card following online directions from her art teacher. The pop-up part had a tulip-shaped paper flower in it, and the outside of the card said: "Happy Mother's Day (in fancy print) happy mother's day (in cursive). The inside of the card said, in print: "Happy Mother's Day I love you love, Rose." Rose is very no-nonsense and straight forward.

Jeff demonstrated for Amber how to make a card, and she ended up using his rough demo as her card, which was a plain white page folded in half with "Mommy!" written on the front in green pen (by Jeff). The inside of the card said "I heart you! --Amber" (heart shape instead of the word), again in Jeff's green pen handwriting. Amber drew a picture of us together, carefully layering on the marker colors to get her blue-gray-green eyes and my brown-green-hazel eyes just right. It's all about the eye color for Amber right now.

So that was that. They each gave their little offerings. At dinner I had everyone say three things they love about me, aka The Mom. I can't remember everything they said, but I do remember at least one per kid: Jay said he was thankful that I don't shout. Rose said she was thankful that I gave her tall genes. Amber said she likes hugging and kissing me.

[end journal entries]

My many hairdos, done by Rose. My neck got red from all of the brushing.

I thought that surviving another mother's day would teach me another profound lesson like the ones I've gleaned over the past few years of not-so-great mother's days, but so far all I have are messages of truth and hope:

Hope (and truth):

"...could we consider this one possibility about our eternal female identity—our unity in our diversity? Eve was given the identity of “the mother of all living”—years, decades, perhaps centuries before she ever bore a child. It would appear that her motherhood preceded her maternity, just as surely as the perfection of the Garden preceded the struggles of mortality. I believe mother is one of those very carefully chosen words, one of those rich words—with meaning after meaning after meaning. We must not, at all costs, let that word divide us. I believe with all my heart that it is first and foremost a statement about our nature, not a head count of our children."

--Sister Patricia Holland Oct 1987 Ensign "One Thing Needful"

Truth (and snark):

My Instagram summary of the day:

Mother's Day: business as usual. My kids show their love for me by taking me for granted. If I was inadequate, they'd notice, but since I'm adequate, they don't notice. Oh, the humbling joy of motherhood!

Writing and reviewing all of these thoughts has helped me see that it all seems to boil down to love languages, at least in my case. On mother's day, when I wish for simple acts of love, I am disappointed not because the acts of love didn't happen and not because they were tiny, but because the love wasn't delivered in my language. Now I have one year to figure out how to squeeze feelings of love and appreciation from my non-dominant love languages...or maybe I need to start educating my kids on love languages so we can all work on giving the kind of love that means something!

Maybe I did learn something from surviving another mother's day after all.

Round 1 of pictures turned out slightly blurry with an odd color balance, so I changed them to black and white and we did one more round of pictures to get some non-fuzzy ones.