Written By Cathy Drinkwater Better
I look forward to Mother’s Day each year. That’s when my three grown kids make a fuss over me and put me up on a pedestal to let me know how special they think I am. Unfortunately, the pedestal isn’t very big and I usually fall off by the next morning. But it’s fun while it lasts.
Nothing could have prepared me for the joys of motherhood, a role I was born to play. Unless maybe, instead of a Chatty Cathy or a Betsy Wetsy doll, somebody had given me a Susie Throwup for my birthday; or a Polly-Pink-Eye and her friend Skipper-Doesn’t-Wanna-Go-to-Bed. Any one of those would have been very helpful.
I thought spending my teen years as a mother’s helper, nursery-school aide, and everybody’s all-around favorite babysitter would had given me an inside track when it came to preparing for motherhood. In retrospect, I realize that nothing short of taking other people’s kids home with me for about 18 years — especially while they were teething, had a stomach viruses, were flunking math (at which I am no help), or were learning to drive — would have given me an accurate picture of what I was in for.
One of the main reasons I wanted to grow up to be a mom came from assuming that every day was Mother’s Day. For one thing, my mom got to tell me when to get up, what to eat, what to wear, when to do my homework, who I could play with, and when to go to bed. And that was when I was in college. So I longed to grow up and have that much control over a couple of rug rats who, when I said, “Jump!” would freeze and say, “Off what?” I would be queen of the castle!
But I turned out to be a fairly laid-back mom — less like a queen and more like a citizen’s block-watch team leader — and we had a lot of fun through the years. Back when my three kids were growing up, they would make Mother’s Day cards for me out of construction paper, glitter, and bits of macaroni. Most of the glitter and macaroni wound up on their faces, the walls, and the floor, but it was very festive. I still have some of those cards, and if the house burned down tomorrow, I’d rescue those keepsakes before I ran for the hills.
As adults, they buy me the funniest Mother’s Day cards you’ve ever seen; mostly because they learned the hard way not to get me the mushy ones. I cry easily, and that just waters down the gravy.
But being a mom doesn’t get me off the hook for buying Mother’s Day cards for other people. Once you have a baby, you are in the universal – and potentially dangerous – position of being a Mom in the Middle; caught between your own mother and your mother-in-law.
But I always slapped a strained smile on my face and held my peace for sake of civility; until that landmark Mother’s Day when an opportunity to express myself in a socially acceptable way presented itself in the form of a Mother’s Day card from the Acme Greeting Card Company. That year I gave my mother-in-law the following perfectly worded card, artfully printed and decorated with flowers and a pink satin ribbon:
On the front it said, “Happy Mother’s Day to the woman who has generously shared all she knows about raising children with me. Your son, the love of my life, is your masterpiece, a shining example of your mothering skills.”
On the inside it read: “And thanks to you, I’ll be picking up his socks and underwear off the floor for the rest of my natural life while he sits around the house with a beer in one hand and the TV remote in the other. Good job. P.S. The boys take after him.”
How could Acme possibly have known what I was feeling? I thought. They hit the nail right on the head! Of course, after that, whenever we had dinner at his folks’ house, I had to have my husband taste my food for me before I ate it. But it was worth it.
Come to think of it, it was that same year I found the perfect Acme Mother’s Day card for my own mother: “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! Thank you for all you’ve done for me over the years. I couldn’t have become the woman I am today without your help,” it said. “By the way, in case you’re interested, the twice-a-week psychotherapy sessions are going well, and my therapist says I should be able to cut back to once a week as soon as I stop curling into a fetal position and crying every time someone says the word Ôoatmeal.’”
I received a card from my mother-in-law that year, too. It was a fairly simple one, also from Acme. It said, “Happy Mother’s Day. As if.” To this day, I have no idea what she was driving at.
Years ago, I used to write my own greeting cards because I didn’t think anyone could possibly express exactly what I was thinking and feeling any better than I could myself. But then I started noticing that that the major greeting card companies were getting a lot better at capturing, down to the smallest detail, what was in our hearts and minds. If you could feel it, they had a card to express it. I couldn’t explain how they did it, except to say that maybe their writers were psychic. Or maybe they all had mothers and mothers-in-law.
All these years later, the Acme Greeting Card Company has long since gone out of business – — all over some bogus class-action lawsuit involving the infliction of emotional distress. I miss their insightful cardsÉ but there are still plenty of other companies around producing good Mother’s Day cards, ones that are just as personal as any Acme ever produced.
With another Mother’s Day upon us, my mom and I exchanged cards the other day. How many times over the years had we repeated this ritual? It’s always a touching moment.
“Happy Mother’s Day to My Darling Daughter,” declared the elaborate card my mother handed me. I looked at her gratefully, wiped a tear from my eye, and opened it slowly. Inside it read, “Why don’t your rotten kids ever call me? Didn’t you teach them anything?”
I swear, it was like whoever wrote that card knew us! How do they do it?
