What do you when Mother’s Day sucks?
I don’t have high expectations for gifts or favors on special occasions. My husband isn’t much of a planner or a big-gesture kind of guy, and try as I might to set the example for my kids, when it comes around to my birthday or Mother’s Day, it doesn’t seem to have taken. One year my husband actually forgot my birthday, something that can only happen once.
The kids are 13 and 11, old enough to know better now. Old enough to have ideas and plan and execute. So this morning when I woke up, even though I figured the bar was low, I expected them to do something. They sleep in on weekends, but Stewart got up early and made me breakfast and brought it to me in bed. That was sweet, but I was excited to see what the kids had done for me. Boy did I set myself up for disappointment.
They did nothing.
The younger one came and gave me a hug. “Do you have something for me?” I asked.
“We’re supposed to have a card for you,” he said. “Kyle was supposed to make it.”
I asked Kyle about the card. “I forgot,” he mumbled from his bed.
So, they were going to do the very least they could possibly do, but they couldn’t bring themselves to do even that.
At first I wasn’t upset about it. As penance, the could clean the house, I joked. But then they started complaining about doing that. My back has been out since Wednesday night, and I’ve been laid up and unable to take care of the million daily tasks that they take for granted. I started feeling like they take me for granted.
So I said so, and the more I talked the more upset I became. Because of my back, I couldn’t even take the opportunity to escape and go for a rejuvenating hike, returning with a fresh attitude and instigating a do-over. I went back up to my bedroom to rest and lower my expectations. Even further.
I tried to count my blessings and focus on those. My mother is alive and well. My kids are healthy, if ungrateful. Who was I to complain? Mother’s Day is a manufactured holiday anyway, right?
But then social media. Look at how my peers’ children cooked for them, or made them dinner or cards or did favors and took them out. Got them flowers. I shouldn’t have looked. What would I post? Photos of my kids laying around in the clothes they wore yesterday, in our messy living room, absent of cards and gifts for Mom? Won’t that be impressive?
Of course Stewart and the kids cleaned the house, made me a card, and picked flowers from the garden after I expressed my disappointment. But their guilt gifts only made me feel a little bit better. They could have saved themselves all that work with just the tiniest consideration for Mom. I would have been happy in the first place with a simple gesture that I didn’t have to demand.
In the end, I made reservations at a restaurant and we went out for an early dinner. My Aunt Kathy was in town so she came with us, and we had a nice time. I am able to release the bitterness of having to do everything around here, even make my own Mother’s Day dinner arrangements. But only because I have this blog to release it to. I decided to spill it here because I can’t be the only one. If you had a Mother’s Day like this, I feel you, sister.
Let that be a lesson to you, children of mothers. It doesn’t take much to make her happy, but it’s just as easy to piss her off.
Ew. I’m so sorry. My friend Laurie always takes Mothers Day for herself, leaving her 3 kids with her husband and taking off for some fun. There’s merit in that. Next year – you and the Four Seasons, girl. While the boys wash your car.
Love you. ❤️
Looks like she’s got the right idea! Noted.
Kim Tracy Prince recently posted…The Bar is Low for Mother’s Day with Teens
My Mother’s Day: what can I say. In times past, I could lament that the day was not meant for the likes of me. But then some of my more “aware” friends started including those of us who are child-free, child-less, not-a-mom in their wishes for the day. I know they mean well, but they do so from a position of “motherhood-is-all”, and that ain’t where I am now or ever have been. Truth to tell, I’ve never been fond of Mother’s Day. It always seemed so phony, something like the senior prom that we’d been raised to believe was a highpoint of our adolescence. Maybe we ought to rethink the holiday. Who started it? And why? And who are the beneficiaries? Maybe it’s superfluous for your kids too. Maybe the reason you’re bummed is that your social media friends seem to have been more successful than you at instilling Mother’s Day motivations in their kids. Or maybe they’re exaggerating. Happy Day, KTP–I love you.
Thanks, Jane. It’s definitely something borne of perspective. I love you and miss you, too!
Kim Tracy Prince recently posted…The Bar is Low for Mother’s Day with Teens
OHHH KIM!!!! Well if it make you feel better Bella was running around this morning pulling it all together maybe because I reminded her the day before. Sometimes they have to be reminded. But in the end they are capable of doing something at sometime. Maybe you should get a redo surprise Mothers Day!! You can remind them that any day in the next few months would be ok.
I’m very suspicious of people on social media whose lives seem perfect. I’m pretty sure their lives are not because why would they be boasting about it on social media. Special occasions are always a bit stressful in our house as I expect more than what normally happens. So I have started suggesting or sometimes commanding about what should happen and sometimes it does. That said Heather Jablonski shared a good article about the reality of Mother’s Day. Let’s hope your birthday and mine are fantastic celebrations.
My girls are usually pretty good about Mother’s Day. My boys…that’s another story. Not trying to gender stereotype, that’s just the way it is here.
They slept in, woke up around noon, wished me an happy Mother’s Day and then proceeded to play video games all day. My husband had to work, so it was just me. I did laundry, made breakfast, washed the dishes and tried not feel disappointed. But I am disappointed. And I think it’s okay to feel that way. I stayed away from social as much as possible because I didn’t want to see all the other mamas getting showered with love. It has already been a rough week and I didn’t want to make it worse.
I try to teach my kids that these things matter. But it seems that some of them just don’t get it. I make sure that they have something for their dad on Father’s Day, even if I have to buy it. It saddens me that they haven’t caught on yet.
You are so not alone. My husband and 10yo son did a decent job yesterday, but my 14yo daughter phoned it in, and created major drama the night before when we both had conflicting plans for the evening. She ruined my night, and I confiscated her phone. She had spent HOURS making a present for a friend’s birthday this week, then handed me a card made in less than a minute. I called her out on all of it, and she was very regretful, and made a sweet post for me on Instagram when she got her phone back. We are usually on the same page about things, and she knows she should have done better, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
Oh, hey-we’re living parallel lives once again.
I got a card and gift that had been made at school from one kid.
My husband, to his immense credit, planned a meal, drove us all to my mom’s and cooked it.
My 15 year old? ‘Um….worse than nothing. I told him Saturday (when he clearly had nothing and no intention of changing that) that his gift could be spending time with me. Did he do that? No, no he did not. He stayed up too late Saturday, and Sunday he was a complete mess. He napped on the couch at my mom’s house and barely uttered two words to her, and ate no dinner. Then we got home and he wanted snacks. I’m trying to let it go, but I haven’t quite managed it yet.
OMG I am simultaneously sad for all of you and relieved that I am not alone! Thank you so much for chiming in and sharing your crappy Mother’s Days!
Kim Tracy Prince recently posted…The Bar is Low for Mother’s Day with Teens
My ambivalence about Mother’s Day (and Father’s Day and Valentine’s Day) makes it easier to be happy that my 4th grader made me an origami boat and helped my prune my hydrangea. Social media, however, makes me feel the following: my family doesn’t appreciate me, everyone else’s does, everyone has more leisure time, cash, and access to beautiful weather than I, and I am somehow deficient for not really giving a flying fig about as you aptly put it, manufactured holidays.
I surprised my own mother with a quick visit because I’m grateful that I still have her and that she’s close. I brought a potted orchid because they’re gorgeous and I know she can keep it alive 🙂 That was enough for me. Except on Facebook.
I’m sorry your day had some lows (also, bad backs are awful!). Take a day off on your own time and let the ingrates fend for themselves as a reminder 😉
I laid it out the day before exactly how I wanted the day to go. I wanted to sleep in and when I woke up late, I wanted him to make me breakfast while I sat outside on the patio doing something I never get to do on Sundays (because of our insane sport’s schedules): read the Sunday paper and more specifically, the Travel section.
I also told my boys that as a gift to me, could they try not to kill each other for one day? One day, please, be nice to each other. That part didn’t happen. There was a bat and an arm involved in that not happening.
Well, my husband didn’t have anything on hand to make that breakfast so around 11, he took the boys to the store.
And although I had the time to read, I chose instead to share a thought I had about the evolution of my holiday expectations from when I first married my husband to now, almost 12 years later. I was brutally honest with my experience, just as you were here, and I feel like that is a form of giving and gratitude because, I too had moms say they could relate and that made it less scary to be so vulnerable.
I got the presents my kids were forced to make at school and wore them proudly. After three hours, my husband managed to get the bike rack on my car that’s been sitting in a box in the garage for over a year, lectured my kids about them not giving me the one gift I wanted and how next year, I’m going away for Mother’s Day and then we took a really fun bike ride in Ventura. It wasn’t even close to perfect and there was a lot of breathing involved but it had glimmers of great and now I have a bike rack I can use to go to the beach. Yay.
Ugh! So this is the repayment I can look forward to after more than a decade of slaving away to keep my young kids alive? Goody.
Sending you a big fist bump and the hopes for unsolicited recognition next year (and many times between now and then). You deserve it!
Amelia Winslow recently posted…5 Easy Ways to Expand Your Child’s Palate
I’m so sorry you ended up feeling like this.
And I’m looking forward to decompressing with you over a glass of wine at our next meeting.
Before. During. After.
Love you, Kim.
Julie Gardner recently posted…A Gift for Graduates
Ah thanks for posting this! We currently live with my in-laws so the focus was mostly on them. But I have three littles and didn’t get so much as a card. BUT it brought to light my own (somewhat silly) expectations.
Meh. Good to know I’m not the only one. Thanks!
Great, Selecting a gift for mother’s day is a difficult task. Mother day is a special day and every child want to gift something special to their mother. Thanks for sharing your amazing story with us.
Thanks for sharing a really nice story with all. Well i always make sure to gift my mom something special, but as all moms are she too says no to everything. Next time i need to plan something really special. Liked to read your blogs. thanks.
This is a lovely story, that makes I remember my childhood was living with family so much, I’m living far away from my hometown, so don’t have a lot time with family. Thanks so much for sharing this