Mother's Day

Anyone who knows me knows that I revel in being a mother to my three “practically perfect” children. I cannot stop talking or writing about them. Being a cheerleader for me children has opened me to some many worlds I would have never known. (Go Maroon and White Marching Colonials!)

But, when it comes to Mother’s Day, I have a love/hate relationship. I love that once a year I can make capricious demands of my children. (There is some glee in knowing their rooms will be clean once a year.)  But I hate the pomposity of Mother’s Day. (I do not like it here or there! I do not like it anywhere!) But perhaps it is our American iteration that I despise with all its pedestals of perfection and paragons of virtue. I confess I much prefer celebrating Argentine Mother’s Day in October—no grand expectations, just a simple call from my loving son.

Consequently, I have written a short, derivative poem about Mother’s Day. I read it to Daniel yesterday.

He got it.

After I finished, he looked at me quizzically. “Where’s the rest?”

“The rest? “ I replied. “There is no more. That’s it.”

“Really?” he said, oh-so-cautiously. He knows when to avoid a minefield.

I know what he was expecting—my usual positive spin. Sorry, Daniel. There is none.

I have a friend who wears black on Mother’s Day. Me? I write cynical poems.

Reflection upon Waking on Mother’s Day

In the chapel Saints will come and go

Talking of Mothers beatified.

And indeed now is the time

To wonder, “Do I dare? “Oh, do I dare?”

Time to imagine the lonely pew

With my padded hips and heavy heart—

(They will say: “Behold our mothers’ prim perfections)

My frumpled frock, which reaches to my double chin,

My earrings, broken yet dear, dangling past memories

(I will say: How thin is my maternal shadow!”)
Do I dare

Disturb this universe of piety?

Shall I stay? Shall I go?

All my decisions and revisions, which I constantly reverse.

And I wonder

Do I dare? Oh, do I dare?

Tent the covers o’er my head

To securely eat a peach?

Do I dare? Oh, do I dare

Stay safely cocooned

This Mother’s Day?