Your grown children bring you cards and thoughtful tokens like your favorite candy and pretty flowers. They give you hugs and might even mean it a little bit. Especially since they now either are fully, or partially, financially supporting themselves and the occasional advice that you drop, hits like sick beats now instead of just Charlie Brown’s teacher noise. They might see a little value in all you’ve given and taught them.
All the babies are here, they are being nice and it’s fantastic fun. Your man makes you breakfast or lunch, gifts you with chocolate strawberries with cheesecake from heaven. I’m not saying you’re like a whole ass Queen but let’s just say the Queen probably feels like this here and there in her days, you know?
All the kind gestures are appreciated and treasured but all you really wanted was pictures of the kids. It’s not like they don’t know that. You weren’t subtle. You literally and verbally told them for the past 2.75 years every Mother’s Day, birthday and Christmas for fucks sake. How many is that? At least 8 holidays you’ve asked… in a row. It’s not like you’re not the photographer either. It’s not like you haven’t groomed them and raised them this way, it’s not a shock, you photographed their whole lives. So much so, they tell you sometimes to grab the camera! One.fucking.hour. Of one fucking day. Maybe two hours if they participate in the run to old navy or gap outlet with you, which is highly doubtful. The oldest, maybe. She does care about your feelings. But the younger ones? Zero fucks. I take that back, the littlest big one will participate if you remind her because the big sister is in.
The middle one, nah. Today was your day and how dare you interfere with his Sunday golf plans, in the immediate future before the weather feels like the surface of sun, or forever, apparently.
So your coffee is gifted, your brunch is made for you, your gifts are sweet, delivered with a side of hurt feelings and always-on mom duty to correct your children or help them understand the world doesn’t ACTUALLY revolve around them. You decide to end the afternoon with the remaining sun, floating in the pool you’ve spent a week prepping… for this very moment of relaxation. You are just about to get in at prime-sun-soaking, music-playing time and you suddenly have a very sad teenager. Pool float has to wait. You help your child in tears who can’t find something as tick, tock, tick, tock, counts down on sunset times.
You get a partial float time, survive the day, soak up the good parts, walk around the house and take stock on the way to bed at night. You make sure the candies aren’t where the dogs might get them, and BAM… it hits, it may have been a “day off” but what you see around you is that the kitchen is a wreck, the sink is still full of dishes, the laundry sits wrinkled in the pantry and as a goodnight gift, you get to wake up tomorrow for work with all the “day off” work hanging over you. Happy Mother’s Day. Always also RIGHT before Monday. Everybody loves Mondays. Like the gift that keeps on giving.
This is motherhood. Rinse. Repeat.
