My Mother, Who Did Her Best
You picked me up when I was down (on the floor, with a busted knee, after playing slip-n-slide in the hallway while you were screwing with the DVR)
You knew what was best for me (especially if I was whiny and we were in the car, driving past a McDonald’s)
You supported me in all my endeavors (except for that one v-ball game you missed where I cahrussshed it!)
You put me before your own needs (and waited to smoke a bowl until I was already in bed)
You showed me the meaning of love (by taking me to get my moustache waxed so I wouldn’t get teased by my middle-school classmates)
You gave me strength to be my own person (who knows when times get tough, I still have Binkie The Bear and the puffy comforter you bought for Christmas to protect me from the rest of this uncharitable world)
You made me Me (congrats!?!)
***
Mom, Who Likes Her Job, Too
In our home, there is the kitchen
Where you add zip, zest and zing
And then there is your desk
Where I watch you do your own thing
I get to learn you have more purpose
Your identity isn’t just about me
You show me mothers are complicated
There are many sides of women to see
I may not have your steady focus
But that’s fine, I’ll be okay
And not some spoiled little turd
With always something important to say
***
For the New Mom Who Wasn’t Sure She Wanted to Be a Mom
J-O-Y. It’s what you now have because you are a mother. What you would never know, if you weren’t. Sure, you may not be happy, according to all the studies, but look at all the J-O-Y you possess now that your hemorrhoids have cleared up and your taint has healed. That baby is pretty damn cute. And you probably never realized you could be so selfless, or so tired as to not finish that glass of wine. Which are good things because not having a second glass of wine is cheaper and may be better for your health and you want to be around to save up for martial-arts classes and the right preschool and to enjoy your j-o-y-f-u-l life. Plus, like everything, I hear it gets better. Or you get used to it. Same, same.
***
For Dead Mom
Thank you for making me grow up by dying in my early twenties. You forced me to become my own woman. A highly sensitive, independent woman who doesn’t take anything for granted––her eyes wide open with anxiety, her heart haunted by our relationship that feels murkier with each passing year, her mind often popping with questions of whether you’d approve of her choices, like those clunky boots she wears to the office. Otherwise, not too much else that’s cool about you not being here, especially having to wade through all this Mother’s Day propaganda reminding me of such.
***
Tags: families, jessica machado, jobs, loss, Megan Piontkowski, moms, mother’s day
These are all amazing. Happy (early) Mama’s day to my mom, your moms (if they are worthy of such things), and all our Toast-Moms.
Can this be a MOMS THINGS thread? My mom and I are going shoe shopping this afternoon and when I texted her to let her know when I was coming over, she responded with a “Ok :-D”
(My mom is pretty great.)
I am texting with my mom this morning about whether it makes us bad people that we kind of enjoyed all the footage from the NFL draft of Johnny Manziel not getting picked and looking pouty about it.
my mom stayed up until 2am EST to be the first one to tell me happy birthday. And then this morning I got an emoji-filled text from her about how happy she was that I was born. <3 you mom.
😀
Happy birthday! Your mom sounds like an excellent mom.
Happy Birthday ! What an excellent mom she is too 🙂
My mom is not much of a Sentimental Mom, but when my birthday rolls around, I often get some variation on: “Oh, I remember when we brought you home from the hospital! You were so tiny! The day I found out I was going to be a mom was one of the happiest days of my life. Thank you so much for being my firstborn and making me a mother, etc.”
This always makes me feel like a 14 year old again, i.e. the “MOOOMMM, you’re EMBARRASSING ME” stage.
My mom just had her birthday last Sunday. When I called to tell her happy birthday, she tells me how glad she is that she’s my mom and that she’s been blessed to have such great kids/great life. I’m like hey, I’m the one who’s supposed to be saying nice things about you on your birthday. But every year she does that. She’s a good one.
Mom thing – my mom always has me pirate the new season of Downton Abbey for her so she can watch it when it comes out early in the UK, but then she still buys the dvds when they come out anyway to support PBS.
Ha! My partner’s parents are big, lifelong PBS donors, but his mom also loves being able to show off to her friends. So I’ve definitely earned points with her by teaching her to pirate Downton during Xmas visits.
These are wonderful. I love the first one especially.
MOM THING: Mother’s Day often coincides with either my brother’s birthday or a graduation of some kind, and I always say I’m sorry to my mom that her day gets usurped by another. But every time she shrugs and says that Mother’s Day is a consumer farce invented by the greeting card industrial complex to get you to buy things, and she’d much rather I didn’t support that kind of thing.
That said, one of our best family friends had a tradition with her kids – now grown up with kids of their own – of picking strawberries at one of the strawberry farms and then having strawberry shortcake for dinner. So we do that with her, now, and it’s the best Mother’s Day tradition I could imagine.
That is such a good Mother’s Day tradition! Anything involving strawberry shortcake is going to be grand.
Our Mother’s Day tradition is going and picking out plants at one of the nearby garden centers–I think this has financed half of my parents’ landscaping at this point.
Now I am crying. D:
At least my relationship with my mom is getting better.
Mine is too. We’ve had our rough patches, and much of my own mothering has been about doing the opposite of what she did when I was a kid, but I love her and things are improving.
Which is good, because she’s moving up here, 30 min. from me, later this year.
My mom passed away when I was 10 so the dead mother card was incredibly apt & I feel grateful that motherless daughters are being acknowledged somewhere on this day! (Of course it would be the Toast). However, I did receive a really nice letter from my step-mom last night, about how even though she didn’t raise me, really, she is very proud of me and feels grateful to able to share in my joys and sorrows. So, I am picking this day to be grateful for my TWO moms, not to mention all the other wonderful women – my sister, teachers, aunts, friend’s moms, etc. – who have been there when I needed a mom figure. It’s not the same but it’s almost always close enough.
Thank you for this lovely post!
Hey, thank you for this comment. I think on Sunday I’m going to call my adopted American mom-figures and thank them for THEIR input in MY life instead of boohooing about how I’m probably not getting anything because my kids are too little and my husband doesn’t give a shit about Hallmark days (to be fair neither do I mostly)
Happy Mother’s Day, Bergie. We all love you dearly and the BBs have no idea how good they have it. 🙂
(Also the last one made me think of you, what with the black and the emotional brickhouseness and the awesome.)
<3 u Snatchie!
More like an emotional tornado with some sticks in it, but you’re right about the black.
Also to be fair, my first Mother’s Day I did get an iPod from him and diamond studs (from his mom) eventually smashed the iPod and lost one of the earrings. #thisiswhyicanthavenicethings
At least none of the babies ate the earrings. Or the iPod, I suppose.
Happy Mother’s Day Bergie! My sister and I exchange little gifties with each other in honor of our late mother. She’ll send me some pretty dessert plates or a book or some flowers, and I’ll send her a little thing that I know that she’ll like.
I know your babies would give you ALL THE THINGS that kids think that moms like, as soon as they are older.
In the meantime, we acknowledge HERE that we know what a rough job you are doing and that you are doing your best, but also that you aren’t ONLY the mother of triplets but your own wonderful self.
Dawww. This is the sweetest, thank you. Right now I just have to think of all the huggakisses I get when they’re in good moods 😉
Okay, now I am crying, because “It’s not the same but it’s almost always close enough,” is a statement that is both completely level-headed and remarkably generous to the world.
I am right there with you. I lost my mom and my stepmom before I turned 30, and Mother’s Day is really really tough. But my bff’s mom has called me her “honorary daughter” for 20 years now, and it’s one of the blessings of my life. Happy mother’s day to your stepmom, and to all honorary moms out there.
Mom thing: After I came out to her, my mom took it upon herself to learn the meanings of all the letters of LGBTQIA, why we don’t use ‘homosexual’ anymore, and why I identify as ‘queer’ and not as a lesbian. <3
my mom FOUNDED the local chapter of PFLAG. (I gave her Redefining Realness for mother’s day) <3 u mom
Yes! Moms going above and beyond.
Can we get a “Mom, you’re a narcissistic pile of human garbage never speak to me again” card for my wife?
It’s going to be a rough ma’s day in my house, I think.
If you find a Grandmother version of that one, shoot it my way.
Amen.
In similar news, http://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbynarcissists is going to be hosting a Mother’s Day support thread. You know, for those of us whose mother is a failure in every significant way.
I’m going to want a copy of that one, please! Only change the end to “I still speak to you out of laziness and deeply ingrained, unwarranted guilt”.
Dead Mom one is perfect and wonderful and I love you, M&J!
My morning interactions re: mother’s day:
Co-worker: So you gonna do anything fun for mother’s day? Hang out with your mom?
Me: Nope. I went to the cemetery last weekend.
(Pro-tip: Get a storage unit near your parents’ cemetery so you can make short, tearful trips to nostalgia-ville)
&
Student worker: Should we make a mother’s day display?
Me: And contribute to the idea that women only have value as mothers? Of course not.
(The current library is now about Frida Kahlo)
Addendum: I think most moms are spectacular people. I was lucky to have a great one. Mother’s day just makes me angsty (because of death!reasons and consumerism and patriarchy).
My mother was also great, and also now dead, and I hate Mother’s Day for all the same reasons.
My mother died a year ago tomorrow, so while I didn’t really realize last year that the date was going to forever coincide with Mother’s Day, that has been made quite apparent to me this year.
Mostly this has manifested in a Wildly Inappropriate Response to commercials about what I “need” to be getting my mother for Mother’s Day. STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO, PRO FLOWERS AND SPRINT AND KAY JEWELERS.
Wanted to let you know you left out Sherrie’s Berries (GROAN) but mostly to say, I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope you find some perfectly non-commodified way to remember your mom this mother’s day.
I don’t think that is a Wildly Inappropriate Response at all, and you can probably ramp it up several more Rage Degrees before it even gets close to inappropriate territory.
Liz said it best, but echoing: I’m so sorry for your loss as well, and I hope this weekend brings up some good memories of your mom. Take it easy on yourself.
That seems to me like a Wildly Appropriate Response. After my father died shortly before Christmas (and I mean, for several years, and still sometimes) I would go into a quiet little rage at gifts-for-dad Christmas commercials, and later at Father’s Day commercials – both because they ripped open a scab that I was frantically trying to heal and because they were so horribly wrong about what my dad would want that it just made me miss him more.
I’m so sorry for your loss, and for the coincidence of dates that makes it doubly painful. I hope it will get easier for you as it does for most of us, and in the meantime know there are plenty of people who think your ALL CAPS grief is absolutely understandable.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
Actual thing I posted on Facebook the other day: “Did you guys know my mom would like to go to the art institute with me? I’D LIKE THAT TOO, UNIVERSE”
Love it.
One fathers’ day I got my dad a card that said, hilariously, I thought, “You’ve always been like a father to me.” He was Not Amused.
In what world is that NOT hilarious?
DadWorld! Apparently.
Hahaha, I am going to suggest this to my husband and SIL to do for my FIL straightaway.
That is a GREAT card!
I tried to get a card like that for my dad BUT MY SISTER WOULDN’T LET ME. It’s on my official list of grievances! Good for you for Living Your Best Life.
Hey, soul sister.
God, I love the Toast. XO, Mom, Who Likes Her Job, Too
My mom died a few days after Mother’s Day a few years ago. It was especially hard because my daughter was just a toddler, and I could have really used her guidance on juggling career, grad school and children. I honor her memory every year by reminding my kids that my mother was a math genius who would have been a CEO or Hedge Fund wizard has she been born a man. But instead she had to help lesser Y chromosome beings to shine. which she did, with a wicked sense of humor.
Miss you, Mom!
Your mom sounds pretty darned awesome, and I’m sorry for your loss.
this is my momkins:
she still wears glasses like that. she’s a total weirdo.
YES PERFECT
Love the Cars…
My mom is amazing and I miss her and love her and I am trying to be better about calling! It’s just hard because she always puts me on speakerphone and then I can’t hear a damn thing. My dad in the background yelling out comments doesn’t really help my comprehension.
My mom makes AMAZING care packages (lady can PACK a flat rate box). She sent me one for Easter and it was stuffed full of paper grass and she included a chocolate rabbit for my boyfriend. Aaaaaaand now I have to go call my mom and update her on the 0 things that have happened in my life since we last spoke
Dad and Mom magazines need to have a feature on parents and speakerphones. What is it with the speakerphones?
I think Moms probably attend a mandatory class about packing flat-rate boxes. Mine come for every holiday with a pair of themed socks, some chocolate, a newspaper clipping from my hometown, something for my partner, and some money in a card with a speech bubble that has a message for me from whatever dead president is tucked inside.
I cannot think of any better combination of things to go in a flat-rate box. A+ job to your mom and anyone else involved.
Mother’s day is on a difficult day for my mom this year– the anniversary of her stillborn son. So I’m sending her flowers and giving her things today, and then letting her be alone with her thoughts on Sunday, that’s what she told me she wanted 🙁
I wish the best for your mom – I’m glad she has you to be there for her!
Thank you! ♥
“Plus, like everything, I hear it gets better. Or you get used to it. Same, same.”
This is the meaning of life in a pretty little capsule right here.
My Mother, Who Did Her Best
*snort*
Thank you so much for this. Every Mother’s Day I begin to despair about the state of feminism/the world while standing in the card isle. My mom and her mom are happily still with me, and neither gardens, bakes, gets manicures or goes to spas. Can we have a holiday that celebrates our moms and their accomplishments? Because while raising me was certainly hard, they have done equally hard things too.
Oh, and can we please have this for Father’s Day too? Both to combat the grilling/sports cards and to acknowledge the dead Dads.
To celebrate this Sunday, my partner is taking the baby away for several hours so I can have brunch by myself – as a cross between work mom, reluctant mom and wine mom, I appreciate this representation greatly.
Seriously, as a member of the Dead Parent Club, this post means a lot to me. Thanks for acknowledging the complexity of, you know, everything.
Yup, another member here, too (and still mourning; Mumsie died just over a year ago and man, I miss her).
*worst high-five ever*
Four years on for me, and it still hurts every day. Differently from how it hurt at first, but still there.
Thanks for the love, everyone! I hate this “holiday” every year because of Dead Mom, so it’s (comforting? insert some better word choice because it sucks!) to know many can relate.
My mother has taken to the sea.
MY MOM WILL NEVER DIE
oh god she will though
no our moms are special PLUGS EARS
GUYS, all moms are special (and die).
My mom to this day cannot believe her own mother is dead. It’s been decades, and the whole family is still in shock. What a garbage system invented by nature.
My mom is a retired elementary school teacher and an artist. She quilts, and everything she pieces together is gorgeous and warm and nurturing. People say, “oh, it’s too pretty to use!” and she insists that she’s created them so people could have them in their daily lives. We have ten of the quilts she’s made, I think, and she always says “Every stitch with love!” when she gives them away.
She has a giant, huge, strong heart and I love her.
My mom quilts too! Even when I was a little kid she would always ask my opinion on colors and fabric and placement, and now that I am grown I am covered in nine million quilts. Thanks mom 🙂
Not to be confused with a mean asshugger.
this thread is making me a) cry and b) SUPER GLAD I’M SEEING MY MOM THIS WEEKEND. (everyone should impulse buy plane tickets if they can) I always want to lend mine out to the people with gone or shitty moms. She’s the best.
Mom Thing: she doesn’t really do exclamation points, and also types “yeah” instead of “yay”. So texts like “I have a job interview!” get “Yeah” as a response. I always read it in the driest voice even though I know she’s probably fist pumping for me.
My mom is pretty ambivalent about moming, but she did text me a tomato the other day because apparently that’s an easier emoji to find than a sad face. So she’s got that going for her.
My mom never wanted to be anything other than a stay-at-home mom, she only did one semester of school, and never worked outside the house after she started having kids. Which is why I think she’s amazing for the way she was able to find a career using the talents she had (she became a pianist for high school choirs) after my dad died at the age of 50, with 5 kids still at home and 3 in college to support.
That sounds AMAZING and I have added it to my Amazon wish list. I feel like your mom and I would get along splendidly.
The card that perfectly sums up how I feel about my mother and Mother’s Day would read “It’s Mother’s Day. I’m Sharone.” Those are my entire feelings. HOLLA to all the people who don’t hate Mother’s Day, but have a very complicated relationship with their moms and struggle every year to remember things they’re grateful for that aren’t “You gave birth to me and didn’t kill me over the next 17 years that I lived with you, so…thanks.”
Also. Mother’s Day is one of my favorite occasions to practice re-writing all the shameless email pitches I get to Buy Mom Presents. “Surprise Mom with a [cease and desist letter]!”
The card that perfectly sums up how I feel about my mother and Mother's Day would read "It's Mother's Day. I'm Sharone." Those are my entire feelings. HOLLA to all the people who don't hate Mother's Day, but have a very complicated relationship with their moms and struggle every year to remember things they're grateful for that aren't "You gave birth to me and didn't kill me over the next 17 years that I lived with you, so…thanks."
Also. Mother's Day is one of my favorite occasions to practice re-writing all the shameless email pitches I get to Buy Mom Presents. "Surprise Mom with a [cease and desist letter]!"
My mum died when I was very young, so I had lots of experience as a child of telling people my mother was dead. People seemed really shocked by it, and I think part of it was them going "Mothers are mortal? Fuck noooo".