In mid-April of this year, a childhood friend posted a screenshot of an email she’d received. It was from a company that makes hip, modern cookware. But it wasn’t an email about pots and pans; it was an email about emails.
“For many of us, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day can be difficult,” it read, “especially in the age of social media. If you prefer not to hear from us around either of these holidays, we understand.” It was an invitation to opt-out of Mother’s (and Father’s) Day emails.
I am not on this company’s mailing list, I am one of those people it was written for. I, too, am the target audience for those empathetic “thinking of those for whom today is hard” posts that float around Instagram on the second Sunday of May. Mother’s Day 2021 in America was a particularly significant one for so many people in who were separated from mothers and grandmothers, children and grandchildren, and beyond, for much of the past year or more. But now that the day has passed, and the reveling is over, I feel like I can share my true feelings on the date in question without poisoning anyone’s metaphorical mimosa.
. . . . . . . . .
When my mom died, it was late July. Most of a year would pass, and I’d turn 16, before the heavy boulder of my first motherless Mother’s Day would roll onto the calendar. It was grocery store greeting cards that first announced the day’s impending arrival. And I had been such a trooper until then, really I had. I had faced my sophomore year of high school with an accept-the-things-you-cannot-change fortitude and had barely missed a beat1. But at Mother’s Day, I put my foot down. Way down deep, I did a kind of deranged Joker-laugh at the whole enterprise. Fuck it. From that year forward, I was going to refuse to participate. Really, it was the least modicum of justice the universe could offer me. No mom? Well, sucks for you, but at least you don’t have to go card shopping in early May!
My stalwart refusal to participate in the the holiday, my pissed-off commitment to some kind of personal justice, ironically, is a kind of tribute to my mother. There’s no doubt in my mind that she’d approve. While I know she wouldn’t want me to be in any kind of distress or pain, blah, blah, blah, I’m sure she’d relish being so cherished and indelible. But, more than that, she would have inherently understood the value of creating your own rules, and of adhering to those invented standards. It was a tactic she employed herself, even as a mothering technique.
A couple of examples come to mind: I wasn’t allowed to have cereal with more than 11 grams of sugar per serving. But if I wanted a cereal, no matter how much it sounded like dessert (Rice Krispie Treat Cereal, anyone? Reese’s Peanut Butter Puffs?) I was allowed to check the nutrition facts right there in the cereal aisle. If it passed her one-criterion test, it was fair game.
She refused to buy me Barbies on feminist/body-standards grounds, a rule she never broke. But I was not forbidden from having Barbies. I simply had to save up my own money for them. Did this result in my self-purchased Barbies being arguably my most prized possession? Yes, yes it did. But I never, ever begged my mom to break her rule for me.
Listen, I realize there are plenty of best-feet-forward or characteristic making-the-most-of-its I could conjure for this one day each year. I could dedicate the Second Sunday in May to the many women who have mothered me in small ways over the years, or to my wonderful father. But he has his own day, and they have their own children. I could focus on the wonderful fact that I’m now a godmother, but my godson lives thousands of miles away, so brunch is out. Most obviously, I could set it aside as a day to treasure my own mom’s memory. But there are other days for that.
May 8, for one. It’s my parents’ wedding anniversary, and this year would have been their 40th. My dad went out to lunch with his niece and her husband to commemorate the occasion, and after he got home we had a long talk about the importance and challenges of keeping her memory alive, which we — no joke — recorded as a pilot episode of a podcast we’re working on together.
See, the problem with the Second Sunday in May is not that it reminds me that my mom’s not here. I don’t require a reminder; there is not a day that I don’t carry that knowledge around with me. The problem is that the day makes me jealous. Ugly-jealous. Jealous of anyone who has a mom to spend the day with and, if I’m being baldly honest, jealous of anyone who has a mom at all, even a shitty mom that they’ve chosen not to spend the day with. Oh! And as I get older, I’m ever-more jealous of the mothers themselves (though let’s not kick over that sack of manure in today’s newsletter, huh?)2.
I’m not proud of any of this jealousy (that would be two deadly sins at once!) My one-woman protest against participation in what is mostly an extremely sweet holiday celebrating critically important figures is, I know, a little petulant. So the gift I’m giving myself is the grace to be petulant about this one thing.
If you need it, I hope you’ll give yourself that gift too. Think of it as a Mother’s Day present to yourself. I’m just going to call it a Second Sunday in May present.
Not necessarily an advisable grief strategy, but what the hell did I know, I was a kid.
I basically wrote an entire play about this subject, now a forthcoming movie, so we’ll talk about it whenever that comes out, shall we?
Second Sunday in May
Marissa, Great piece. I lost my mother 17 years ago. I can so relate to the part of your story that talks about the card store. There are still times when I stop at card displays and look. A wise friend one told me that the positive take away was that you were fortunate to have someone in your life, for however long, that touched you so deeply. I also think that those feelings are a way for your Mom to always be with you.