Hail the moms and women who dread Mother’s Day

On this the third Mother’s Day that I’ve spent apart from my son, I want to give a shout out to all the women and mothers for whom Mother’s Day is a tough day to get through. All the divorced moms who don’t have their kids this weekend, all the women struggling with infertility, all the women who are estranged from their adult children, all the mothers in prison, all the grandmothers who’ve never met their grandchildren, all the mothers whose children have passed away. This is not an easy day for many, many people, and I’m always relieved when it gets toward evening on Mother’s Day, and I know it’ll soon be over with for another year.

Mother's Day 2010

I did get to spend some time with my mother this weekend (more on that tomorrow). In my more cynical moments, I wonder if me being separated from Victor for three Mother’s Days is karmic justice for all the bitchiness and selfishness I perpetrated against my mother for so many years. But then when I’m in a more spiritually fit condition, I know our situation isn’t divine revenge. And it isn’t even good or bad. It just is.

(Next year Mother’s Day I’ll have Victor and we’re going to fucking LIVE IT UP. Balloon rides, shopping sprees, gallons of ice cream, a fucking BLANKET of tulip petals—a blanket, I say—for me to lay myself on.)