Again. With the Mother's Day thing.

When I was young, I remember hearing my mom say she didn't like Mother's Day. This made no sense to me. She got breakfast in bed, heard us sing a Mother's Day song, and even got a potted plant at church, for crying out loud. What was there to complain about?

The unfortunate thing about my life is that whenever I'm critical of my mom, I eat it later.

Karma has insured that I also hate Mother's Day.

And I think I may even know a few of the reasons for disliking it.

For starters, Mother's Day is on a Sunday. And Sunday, traditionally, is my worst mothering day of the week. (I suspect it was my mom's too.) My Sundays go like this:

I coax two reluctant children into the shower.
I insist that soap will not get into their eyes.
I apologize profusely when soap does, in fact, get into their eyes.
I find clothing: scanning the closets and burrowing through hampers.
I pull the children out of the shower and bring out a brush.
I explain to them, calmly, that I have pulled out a brush, not a carving knife, and that there is no need to scream.
I promise to use detangling spray.
I chase them around the house, maniacally waving the brush.
I give up.
I pull three sets of clothes over three little bodies.
I search for three pairs of shoes.
I glance at the clock and yell, "Get into the car, we're going to be LATE!"
We miss breakfast.
I arrive at church with two hungry and homeless looking children. And Brad has saved us seats at the front.We parade through the crowd and I slump over in the pew.

And since today was Mother's Day, I got to follow up this fiasco by listening to wonderful talks about practically-perfect mothers in the scriptures while my children ran back and forth in the pew, begged for paper and crayons, fought with each other, and refused to whisper.

Also, every time one of my children disobeys on Mother's Day, it's like evidence. "Here is further proof that you are a bad Mother. Booyah."

I think the worst thing for me about Mother's Day is that the gift I want the very most is a break from my mothering responsibilities. Isn't that awful? It's like saying that what you want for Valentine's Day is more alone time.

I told Brad all of this today while we sat in the parking lot at church, where I was feeding Weston. He followed me out to ask why I looked so depressed. (I've married a man who is happy. And his only goal is for me to be happy. And I do a really good job of making that hard for him.) He made me laugh in the car (he's good at that). After church he gave me the break that I wanted but felt guilty about taking. I had a nap. And lunch in bed. And a foot massage. And he did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen and watched the munchkins. And then we visited with some of our wonderful friends.

It was a good second half of the day. Maybe next year I can just skip the depression/guilt part. That would be nice.