Forget the flowers and the Al Jolson song on Mothers' Day - just give your oul' wan a little respect.
Here's the perfect solution to loving-up your mam tomorrow: cancel Mother's Day. Forget the vouchers for spa holidays and hairdos and shopping, the dinner reservations, the Dutch tulips and the chocolates.
The commercialisation of motherhood has trapped mothers on a domestic treadmill that no gift could ever possibly compensate. Many women have themselves bought into the notion, thanks to the plethora of baby books and mothering magazines, that they must be unconditionally perfect. Many women have given up on their dreams so that they can have the children and the house sparkling.
Three-quarters of Irish mothers find motherhood difficult, according to a recent survey. And two-thirds cite their children as their greatest source of joy, which makes you wonder where the other one-third are getting their joy from. (Answers to kholmquist@irish-times.ie, please.)
Mother. It's a word on a corny card surrounded by flowers, pastel swirls and glitter. It's a cartoon tattoo on a hard-man's bicep.
The commercialisation of Mother started in the early 20th century, around the time of that Al Jolson tune: "Ma-a-a. How I love ya, how we love ya, my old dear Mam-my". A woman in Philadelphia wanted to commemorate her mother and, before long, all 50 states were doing it.
It's blatant emotional blackmail. How can you dare not recognise Mother's Day when Hallmark says you should? Let's get real. Past the age of 18 months, nobody worships their mother. And if you're still looking for that kind of unconditional love past the age of 18, you probably need a little therapy. If you're a mother who thinks that the baskets of flowers and chocolates and the dinners out tomorrow are a fitting tribute, then you probably need a lotof therapy.
(Personally, I've spent more than one mother's day in Tesco meeting all the other mothers buying Sunday dinner and flowers for themselves because their families had completely forgotten what day it was. So much more honest.)
A friend once confided that she thought her marriage had worked out well because her husband always made a fuss of his mother on Mother's Day. Before my friend even had children, her husband was giving her Mother's Day flowers and cards. Her point of view is that a man who hates his mother and ignores her on Mother's Day isn't going to celebrate his relationship with his wife once she's become a mother.
My own reaction was different: I'm not your bleedin' mother! Well, that's just the upside of a holiday that has its roots in the prehistoric worship of the mother goddess Rhea and became commercial in the early 20th century, when door-to-door salesmen were looking for other holidays to mint money from besides the newly invented Coca-Cola Christmas.
The downside is that, for so very many people, the dawning of another Mother's Day is a time to hide under the duvet and sob. It can be an awful day for children and adults whose mothers are dying or who have died. And for women and couples suffering the agony of infertility, the day can be torture.
For many of us, whether we're mothers or not, it's a day to visit the cemetery, either physically, or in that cemetery of the soul where the dead mothers and unborn children live on.
Feeling all of these emotions and conflicts, I reckon there's only one way to spend mother's day. And that's with other mothers, celebrating each other. It could be a cup of tea or a phone call, with a few words of condolence to lighten the day. Condolences are in order, I reckon, for all those women who lost their girlish selves when they became mothers (91 per cent of Irish mothers were changed by motherhood, according to the survey), as well as for all those women for whom motherhood has brought pain.
Having lost my mother, and having gone through the pain of infertility on Mother's Day before Rhea the Goddess blessed me with kids, I feel true joy from the unprompted gestures of a handmade card, a cup of tea in bed (here's hoping) and a flower plucked from the ground while my children and I are out walking with the dogs. That makes my day any day of the year. Don't celebrate my motherhood by spending money please. I am so much more than an Al Jolson song or a Hallmark card.
