The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother’s Day are the good ones. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
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The other day, I asked MB to pick up some Mother’s Day cards, one for his mom and one for mine.
“Do NOT get a funny card for my mom. She’ll get pissed. It needs to be smushy.”
He sighed.
“I know. Don’t worry. I’ll find something.”
He came home that night with two cards: a perfectly charming funny card for his mom that cost all of 2.50 and a two-dimensional floral cutout card for my mom that cost 7 bucks. It even came with a gold seal for you to affix to the back of the card after you seal the envelope, so she will know she’s special, dammit. Real fancy schmancy stuff.
Problem was, it said “For you” on the front and didn’t have any smushy sentiments on the inside. Just something like “Hoping you have a wonderful Mother’s Day.”
Uh-oh.
“So this was 7 bucks?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“Okay. Well … it IS really pretty.”
The conversational barometer spiked slightly.
“I’m sorry, hon. All the smushy ones were too smushy. ‘Oh, you’re an angel, Mother,’ blah blah. I knew you couldn’t hang with those.”
“True.”
“I couldn’t agree with any of them at all.”
“Okay. No, it’s a beautiful card, babe. I believe you when you say it was the best one there. I just know how mom will look at it.”
Hm. I was turning into “that wife.” I could feel it. That wife who asks her husband to do something and then, when he does it, criticizes it because it’s not just so. Oh. I was turning into my mom. Over a Mother’s Day card.
MB sighed.
“I know.”
“Like Happy Mother’s Day to a Special Lady.”
He laughed a short laugh.
“I know.”
“I’m being a bitch. I’m sorry. I hate Mother’s Day.”
“I know.”
He just hugged me.
Still, I knew I had to zhuzh that card up, as Carson Kressley says, so the next day I scoured the Internet for quotes about mothers. I’m not kidding. I did. Something to plump up the sentiment factor. Something that didn’t make me feel like a sellout or a liar. Something that wouldn’t make me barf. The one at the top of this post was my favorite, actually, and I read it to MB.
“Yeah. Don’t put THAT in the card.”
“No. Obviously.”
I finally found a Victor Hugo quote — Mom loves Victor Hugo because dead people are easy to love — and wrote that on the card along with a vaguely smushy personal sentiment. I sealed the envelope with the Brownie-point winning gold seal, sighed a huge sigh, and handed it to MB to mail along with the low-maintenance card to his mom.
“I hate Mother’s Day,” I muttered.
“I know,” he said.
