A post I did for my friend Louise over at Singlewith.com. Not grumpy! Just tired! This sentence is purely so I can put an exclamation point after it!
A Single Mom Says, “Screw Mother’s Day!”
I grew up in an anti-Hallmark family in which Valentine’s Day, Father’s Day and Mother’s Day were ignored particularly loudly.
“They’re made-up holidays that big companies are just trying to get you to spend money on,” my own single mom confided when I was a kid. This made me feel savvy and consumer literate, like I had one up on the tchotchke-buying masses. No needlepoint samplers or Strawberry Shortcake mugs with A Berry Special Mom on them for my clear-eyed, lefty mother. “I always love it when you think of me, but for God’s sake, not because some billion-dollar corporation tells you to.”
Then I married into a more conventional family and had twins and realized that if clasping my bra made me feel I deserved a medal some days, then I was sure as shit going to take my appreciation any which way I could get it. I no longer cared that Mother’s Day was a cloying, sentimental capitalist ruse to part us from our money—if there was chocolate and maybe a brunch to be had, I was going to have it! And it really was nice to feel special and feted and appreciated, whether with a glittery, misspelled card or an afternoon to myself, courtesy of my husband. Once I even dragged my mom to my in-laws to share in the made-up-holiday joy, and she kept her radical views to herself.
Read the rest HERE
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