On With Your Story

For a personal history aficionado, I am uncharacteristically anti mother’s day. On my more cynical days, I view it as a forced event for commercial purposes. My daughter always remembers the day, but I usually tell her to just skip it. And I mean it.

Of course, I like hearing from her. She sent me a greeting card this year with sweet notes from her and my soon-to-be son-in-law and enclosed a Starbucks gift card. She called me this morning, too. But it’s not like that TV commercial where mothers all over the world faint from shock when their grown children call. My daughter calls me every couple of days. And I see her every month or so, because she lives only 3 hours away by car. I am very fortunate, I know.

Instead of being Oscar the Grouchy Mom, I should welcome any occasion that reminds us to visit and listen to our families. That can be done without flower arrangements or champagne brunches or paper cards with printed sentiments. If my mother were alive today, this is what I would like to do.

When my brothers and I were children, my mother had a big book of wall paper samples. On the first of May, we would sit at the kitchen table with scissors and glue, and make little baskets from the wallpaper. In them we would put buttercups that we picked from the fields near our house. Then we’d put the baskets on the doorsteps of neighbors, ring the doorbell, and run away. If mom were alive today, I’d put a handmade May basket on her porch with herbs from my garden.

Thanks, mom, for that memory.