Mother's Day, 2015

Don't get me wrong.  I love Mother's day.  This year, Sean bought me 200 feet of soaker hose and helped me build an irrigation system for my vegetable garden! I'm all for any holiday that celebrates my awesomeness, and almost guarantees that I can go to the lawn-&-garden store and buy irresponsible amounts of shade perennials, but still--- the whole idea of celebrating all mothers on a single day seems fishy to me.

I think the traditions of mother's day-- the brunches, the flowers, the truck-loads of horse manure* ** ***--- should take place on the birthdays of that mother's children.  After all, she was the one who endured hours and hours of horrific pain in order to bring them into this world, and then, once her prenatal yoga class was over, she had to have childbirth! Shouldn't we celebrate mother's day on that child's birthday?

* I have a weird family ok.
** Yes, that is a real mother's day present my mother received from my father one year.
*** she loved it.

But instead, we live in a messed up world where, rather than relaxing on the anniversary of their child's birth and perhaps enjoying celebratory cocktail for keeping that child live for another year,  mothers have to spend that day experimenting with unnatural color's of frosting for their toddler's birthday cake.  It seems unfair, right?

That's why next February, I will insist that we celebrate mother's day early.  On Millie's birthday, I will enjoy 8 hours of relaxing-while-reading-heirloom-seed-catalogs, in order symbolize the 8 hours of time I was in labor with her. Then, I'll go to a prenatal yoga class and shout encouragement at all the expectant mothers. "Don't worry!" I'll lie,"Those will go back to normal!" and, uproariously-- "It's going to be hard work, but the pain is manageable!" Finally, we'll wind up the day with a little party in which all Millie's friends can all bring her shade perennials in lieu of traditional presents. I have a feeling they are really going to like the outdoor activity---a rousing game of "Spread the horse manure on Millie's Mommy's Garden!"

I'm becoming my mom.

Oh my God.  I'm becoming my mom.

My mother used to come into our rooms each night to check that we were still breathing.  She did this our entire childhood, and by "childhood" I mean "the period of time in which we were her children." One time, I was home from COLLEGE, and I heard a rustling in my room at 2:00 am. I naturally assumed that it was an intruder coming to ravage me, and prepared to attack him with a rack of decorative porcelain figurines that hung near my bed. (These were a relic of my youth, a time in which collecting porcelin figurines seemed like a good investment, and after many trips to THE DOLLAR TREE with my indulgent grandmother, I was now the curator of an impressive collection.  It would be a shame to break them all, but it was undoubtedly preferable to being ravaged.)  I reached out into the darkness to grab the rack.  At the same time, a hand groped in the darkness towards my face....

....and stuck its finger underneath  my nose.  A familiar finger.  My mother's finger.  "What the hell are you doing?" I asked her-- still clutching the porcelain figurine rack.  "Oh, you know, just checking that you are still breathing," she said casually, as if this were a completely normal behavior.  Obviously, without her constant vigilance, her healthy 20 year old daughter with no known diseases or illnesses would perish in the night.

We used to tease my mother about this all the time. "Wait until you have children," she would tell us, "then you'll see."  "Whatever." We replied, like the insolent little assholes that we were.

My mother also used to confuse our names, especially when yelling at us.  "Dammit Kelly! I mean Tori! I mean Brandi--Katie-- whoever you are!" She would yell. We would laugh at this especially because Brandi was the dog.  Silly Mommy! Why was it so hard to tell us apart from the DOG?  Surely we would never be so foolish as to make that mistake.

Fast forward 20 years.  Now I have a daughter, and what do I do? "Millie sit down!" I tell her, "Stop licking the baby!"  Then I add, "Cricket, do you want to read a book with Mommy?" Oh my God. I'm becoming my mom.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

And I think owe her an apology.

Mom,

I am so sorry that I teased you about confusing my name with the dog.  You were right, it was harder than it looked, and I was being kind of a bitch.  Also, thanks for checking on me so many times to make sure I was still alive.  Do you think Millie's still alive?  Hang on, I'd better go check on her....

Ok. I'm back.  Anyway, please accept my collection of decorative porcelain figurines as a token of my appreciation.  I see now that I was being an ungrateful little twat. 

With love,
Katie


I'm so lucky that my mom is still with us, but I know it wont always be that way.  Now that I'm a mother too, I'm 100% certain about what will happen to my mom when she goes. She will DEFINITELY turn into a ghost, that way she can haunt me and my sisters. She will sneak into our bedrooms and night and wail sage advice as us in a ghostly voice such as, "don't sleep in your bathing suit, it will give you crotch rot!" Then, as we lay dreaming, an eldritch hand will reach out from beyond the pale towards our faces.... and she'll check that we're still breathing. 

My First Mother's Day, My Own Mother, and a Long Overdue Thank-You Note.

Yesterday was my first mother's day, and-- like parenthood-- it was filled with highs and lows.  Millie forgot to get me a card, but Sean saved her by buying one for her.  A definite high was the gift from my in-laws-- a "shopping spree" of sorts in their beautiful shade garden.  They had excess hostas, lungwort, ferns, black-eyed-susans, bee balm, and other perennials and they loaded us up. They took me around their property, letting me pick out the things we wanted for our yard. I responded exactly like a shark in a tank full of chum, and went on a sedum-induced feeding frenzy.

The definite down side was our drive home, in which Millie screamed for 3 and a half hours, probably in protest to the fact that I hadn't let her pick out which hostas we wanted for the side yard.

I also had the opportunity to speak to my own mother, who is the strongest, smartest, funniest woman alive.  Lets be clear---if my mom got in a fight with any of your moms--- she would win. Likewise, if she got in a math competition or a dirty limerick writing contest, she would win. SHE IS A WINNER.  Yesterday, I was thinking a lot about the ways in which my mother has prepared me for motherhood, and the areas I have fallen short. Here is what I've come up with.

Prepared:
Cussing:
When you are a new mother, you have a lot of new emotions, fears, and hormones coursing through your system. For instance, when I first had Millie, I had to confront a crippling fear of not having chocolate ice cream at every meal. Luckily, I knew exactly what cuss words to say in order to make my sentiments known. This is all thanks to my mother.
My mother grew up on a farm in rural Georgia with four older brothers who schooled her in the use of pill-bottle-based explosive devices and colorful expletives. Soon their young apprentice began to outpace them all, and demonstrated such mastery of the four major cuss words of the day (shit, damn, ass, and hell,) as to claim the title of prodigy.
Hilariously, I had no idea of my mother's genius until I was 13 years old, at which point my parents allowed me to cuss, and my mother taught me to shout "who dealt this shit?" when playing spades. My mother is very VERY good about controlling her language in front of children, so up until this time, I had no idea that I was to become a young padawan to such a  powerful language master.
Now that I am a grown up and have a daughter of my own, I am thoroughly enjoying the golden months when Millie is still oblivious to my sailor mouth.  Very soon, I will have to retire my impressive vocabulary until her young and impressionable ears are more developed.  I can't wait to see the look on Millie's face on her 13th birthday, when she discovers the truth about her mother and grandmother, and I can't wait to teach her to say "who dealt this shit?" ---a feat for which I am totally and completely prepared thanks to my own Mom.

Not Prepared: 
Writing Thank you notes: 
I didn't grow up in the sort of house where we wrote thank you notes.  In fact, I didn't even grow up in the kind of house where we exchanged birthday cards. Perhaps the most glaring example of my unpreparedness for motherhood is my absolute inability to keep up with even the most basic mail correspondence. This is normally not much of a problem, as the good lord saw fit to invent email during my lifetime, graciously sparing me from a life of social shame, and--as a bonus-- allowing for the distribution of cat videos among my g-chat friends.  However, when you have a baby, you receive gifts from absolutely everywhere.  I am not making this up when I say that we received at least ten beautiful and thoughtful baby gifts from persons who we have never met, ever in our lives.  This puts a lot of stress on me, a person who is already handicapped in the thank-you-note-writing area, and I've often had this conversation with my mother: "We are receiving a gift from who? The friend of your coworker's dog groomer? They are getting us what? Oh wow! How lovely of them-- will you try and get their address so I can write them a thank you note?"  To be honest though, even if I have the address, I'll most likely never send the note because I am too distracted watching cat videos on the internet.  So, if you have given us a baby gift and are still waiting on your thank you note, please accept this one on my behalf:

Dear (please circle one) Person who I have never met/ Close friend/ Relative/ Dog groomer of relative, 

Thank you so much for your adorable gift of (please circle one) bibs/ tiny dresses/ tiny dresses with matching bibs.  We love them and Millie looks adorable in them.  Your thoughtfulness overwhelms us, and we are so grateful to you for thinking of us during this momentous time in our lives. 

Warm Wishes,

Sean and Katie

Now, there was a moment in which my areas of preparedness and unpreparedness came full circle, and that moment was when I wrote the thank you note to my parents after my baby shower. To put them at their ease, I made sure to include plenty of cuss words. It went something like this:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Thank you so much for the beautiful and thoughtful cloth diapers.  I will always think of you when I am up to my ears in baby shit. Also, thank you so much for all the times you wiped my ass, as I'm sure that could not have been fun for you. 

All my love,
Katie


Now that it's mothers day, I am inspired to write a different sort of thank you note to my Mom.

Dear Mom,

First of all, thank you for enduring the horrific pain of childbirth and subsequent sleep depravation that accompanied my entry into this world. Also, you are a Bitch for lying to me about how much that would suck.  Thank you so much for keeping me alive until I was thirteen, and then teaching me to cuss-- that was really fun.  Thanks in short, for all the ways in which you prepared me for being a mother, and for teaching me that---although I will probably have to wait for thirty years for a thank you note from my own daughter-- she will definitely be grateful to me for putting up with all her bullshit. I love you.

Happy Mothers Day,
Katie