Mother’s Day is different when you’re a young mom than from when you’re a grandma. And when you’re dealing with great grandma, all bets are off.
First Let’s Go Back In Time
When I was a young mother all I wanted on mother’s day was some rest. The predominant plan was to get my husband Leo to take the kids somewhere for a couple hours, have them make handmade cards with folded copy paper and markers, and then have dinner together with a cake. But mother’s day for grandma, for my mom, wasn’t like that.
My Mother, Not Myself
My mother has always felt mother’s day was very important. Perhaps this started when we were all very young, back when my dad said Mother’s Day was a conspiracy started by Hallmark to sell greeting cards. This caused tension, and my two parents reached a compromise. While everyone else celebrated Mother’s Day, we were allowed to celebrate something called Family Day. We all went out to eat together and the children got gifts.
We’ve Had Some Issues in this Family with Honoring Women
Later on when my mother told me the story I reflected. How could Dad have gotten such an idea? I think it came from his reading of Marx, but I’m not sure. Dad also described buying engagement rings as “bourgeois.”
Family Day was phased out in favor of a more normal Mother’s Day by the time I was ten or twelve. The pressures brought on by school teachers, friends, and the grandparents finally overran Dad’s created holiday.
Our wonky way of celebrating Mother’s Day when I was a kid may have underwritten my own very casual view of Mother’s Day.
My Laissez-Faire Mothers Day Practices
When my kids grew up and left home, Mother’s Day became even more understated for my kids. They called me. I wouldn’t dream of asking them to do more. Likewise, my daughter Tiara told me last week that she wants to keep Mother’s Day simple, and if son in law Bob would just take the kids to Chick Fil A for an hour that would do.
But Not Everyone in Our Family Takes the Casual View
My mother is over 80, but to this day, her children ignore Mother’s Day at their peril. Even back in the 70’s, when Mother’s Day was Family Day, we all had to wear our fanciest clothes and go to a fancy restaurant and Be Good. If you were bad on Family Day, you would get punished. Later, as a grandma, Mom kept up the high expectations. If you don’t get a good gift for her, you can expect retribution including, but not limited to, complaining to your brothers. One day I sent flowers and FTD did a lousy job and I got the blame. You can’t be too careful with Mother’s Day if you’re me.
This problem vanished when, due to a number of factors, I decided not to speak to Mom any more last March, but it came back to life this year when I re-established contact.
I knew I’d better take some steps to do at least a “good enough” job on Mother’s Day if I didn’t want the whole “not good enough mother’s day” thing to start again. I set up a special lunch for me Tiara and Mom, arranged gifts, arranged clothing… It’s all an evasive maneuver, I said to myself.
Or is it?
The truth is, I don’t know if it’s all pragmatic. I do feel like this is my duty. The whole thing gives me a chance to reflect on how much Mother’s Day means to some.
Part of what I’m doing is trying to satisfy my mother’s expectation because it’s just easier. She feels that her kids owe her proper attention on Mother’s Day. We’re making up for the Family Day debacle or the 70’s. But there’s more to it than that.
This is a Bigger Question Than it Might Seem
What do we mature adults owe to our moms in terms of Mother’s Day? What does Mother’s Day with grandma look like?
How do we deal with it when we feel like our mothers weren’t the paragon of virtue that they see themselves as? Do we still have to “do” Mother’s Day to their satisfaction?
At times I feel like the aged parent rhetoric goes something like my mom saying “Look I kept you alive isn’t that enough? Keeping a kid alive is a lot of work!” And it is.
It’s like what Aging Hippy Chick said one day, that she and I were both “under mothered.” It also connects to my claim at a support group a couple months ago, “What’s up with our parents … They give you food for a few years and they think they own you forever.”
Perhaps the problem is that our vision of ideal motherhood is so at odds with the reality of what motherhood actually is. Pushed off into daycare centers as I was, being bossed around and mocked, yelled at, humiliated, and there are some stories of real cruelty in my history…. Is there any point when I say “Yeah Mom you didn’t do the stuff you should have done. Now you don’t get Mother’s Day?
Basically No.
Basically, if you’re still speaking to your mom, no, there is no such point. If you want to be a good person with siblings and everyone else you have to honor your mother on Mother’s Day. It is, for many moms, a basic need.
Mother’s Day with Grandma Involves a Role Reversal
One thing that helps with this is remembering the how ultimately your parent becomes the child and you become the parent. I can think of my mother as a somehow-child who doesn’t understand that her demands are self centered and don’t take into consideration the stuff I suffered when I was a kid. Her fragile view of the world can be tipped by ungrateful children. And that could be physically dangerous to a heart patient like herself.
I can extend to her the same kindness that I extended to my own children when they did bad bratty things. Or that I do with students who are “making poor choices.”
When Your Parent Becomes Like Your Child
I have come to believe that in as much as I am now the defacto parent and my mother is the child, it is my duty to take my mother out for Mother’s Day. So Mother’s Day with grandma turns around to being something to get done, like Mother’s Day when you have young children.
This reminds me of how I got fed as a child whether I deserved it or not. The truth is I spend a lot of time complaining about the way I was treated but I was not a particularly well-behaved kid and I don’t think I was an easy one. Yet I got the things I needed.
Okay: Truth. I Wasn’t a Model Child.
Yet I received a home, food, and clothing. Perhaps that was only because my mother would have proudly said “We are a certain type of people and we do not dump our children off at the orphanage or put them in foster care.” The neighbors were watching and so we had good clothes and a good house.
Whatever her motive and rationale the fact is is that she did do the things we needed to have done. (Or in many cases she told my father to do them.) She gave her effort to raising a child, and now I will give the effort to taking an aging parent to lunch.
I find some peace in writing this out. I would be curious to know the thoughts of any readers who also have difficult moms and also feel conflicted when they go about honoring them on mother’s Day.
