It’s that sweet time of year when the apricots are ripening on the trees out back, the birds wake me up before the alarm clock, and mentally ill mothers everywhere expect their alienated children to come bowing, hat in hand, at their feet. And somehow, for no logical reason, it works.
Now this is what I call a neat trick. I’d love to learn how to be needy and rude for 364 days in a row and still have people bring me flowers and candy. I wonder if the size of the bouquet would be to scale with the degree of misery I impart? Imagine the possibilities!
Given the imminence of this special day, I’ve done a bit of research and discovered its true origins. Mother’s Day originated not in the heart of a strong, loving Mama whose only requested reward was her child’s happiness. Nay, the day sprouted from the darkened mind of a short, tyrannical woman who insisted on being praised for her marginal mothering. And it goes a little something like this:
The poor lonely Mother awoke one morning to find herself utterly alone; alone in her bed with the ironed sheets, and alone in her mansion with only the live-in housekeeper as company, but he’s Philipino, so he doesn’t count. She rolled out of bed, casting a remorseful glance at the four Snickers wrappers lying empty on the bedside table, and padded on pedicured toes into the bathroom. There, she slathered cavier on her face, just as the doctor had ordered to preserve her face-lift. Mother looked into the mirror and sighed. Oh, how she wished her son would just show up with flowers and tickets for a cruise. Or that her daughter-in-law would surprise her with a stack of magazines, from which she’d permit her to choose a haircut that she felt more suited the young wife. These kids today, they need guidance, they need HER. Why can’t she make them know that?
Mother wrapped herself in her robe and sauntered toward the kitchen in search of coffee and doughnuts. She stopped along to the way to check her emails and voicemachine for the familiar presence of her grown children, only they had long since stopped phoning, although she had no idea why. She thought they’d said something about “invasive” or “manipulating,” but clearly they were high on drugs because they made no sense at all. Whatever they had said, apparently they meant it, for she hadn’t heard from them in a very long time. Mother could barely even remember what the youngest one and his wife looked like; she’d never bothered to put up a picture. How typically selfish of them to leave her memory!
Mother chewed her doughnuts in a silence that no click of Vivier heels could fill. She stewed. She lamented. She made a few phone calls, and then wept herself into a frenzy in the presence of her similarly surgically-altered friends. For she did, after all, sacrifice everything for her ungrateful children, who only sought to take from her every other day of the year. And for what?
‘Is it too much to ask for these selfish little brats to at least pretend to love me for one measly afternoon? Don’t you see how they treat me? ’ Her friends, drunk on the standard Upper Class Cocktail of acrylic nail fumes and Xanax, clucked their tongues and helped her devise a way to guilt her adult children into submission. Once they felt confident with their plan, they telephoned their good friend Ari Hallmark in New York and sold him the idea. The rest is history.
Yes, folks, that’s where Mother’s Day came from. Just because you didn’t know it, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Coming up: Mother’s Day Countdown – The Revolution!
