Mother’s Day. it’s very important to me. in direct proportion to how important my mother is to me. every year i try to gather as many trinkets and precious things to amass and present to my mother, like a child. except now i can buy them. i no longer pick dandelions and collect stones and things that look pretty and precious to a child, put them all in a box and proudly present them to my mother.

now i spend weeks collecting packets of seeds, flower pots, four leaf clovers, candy, vintage lucky charms, friendship bracelets, talismans, anything and everything that reminds me of her. it’s really not changed at all since i was a little girl. the trinkets are just more expensive, but not more valuable. and i’m no less proud or excited than i was the first time i performed what is now a ritual. perhaps, more so. more giddy, more excited, more aware of my heart about to burst while i watch the expression on her face and hope that i will see the love on her face and that in that moment we will both feel the same overflowing happiness transferred back and forth between us, multiplying itself in this rare moment of making love visible.

as joyful as i feel about creating this moment, i am most equally disturbed by the misery of buying a card. i try to be optimistic about it, but it really never works out. right from the start, i’ll lean into a rack of mother’s day cards and disappointment sets in. there’s so called humorous cards, which really lack any humor at all. there’s springy looking cards of no substance, there’s big giant huge cards, reserved only for the most smarmy kids, and then, of course the worst cards of all. you know what i’m talking about… the cards that say “to a Special mother…”

these are the cards that make my brain short circuit right in the card store. my senses full of the sickening smell of a hundred awful candles, bright white flourescent lights, and the confusion of this phrase in my mind. usually first i wince at the sight of such cards and then i try to contemplate what the fuck it means. i keep repeating it over and over “to a special mother’ and just marvel at the extreme stupidity of such a statement or is it a sentiment? what does this mean? as if we have 10 mothers and one of them is most special? is it saying, i wouldn’t spend 99 cents on my ordinary mothers, but rest assured, you’re the special one. the more i ponder the stupidity the more anxious i become and more disgusted by every card. if one could be this stupid, they all are. inevitably, i leave empty handed and return home to a pencil and a sheet of white paper and draw a card, a proper princess card for a very special mother indeed, mine.

dd