Angry Mother's Day

This post is going to be a bit saucy.  If you absolutely love tomorrow's holiday, I'm so glad for you.  You and Hallmark can go enjoy tomorrow while the rest of us growl about the injustice of it all.

Back when I only had one family--that of my parents--Mother's Day was simple:  make the day all about my mom.  Make her breakfast in bed, give her a card, make her day easy.  I actually saw an episode of Sid the Science Kid that even though they never said the words "Mother's Day" the special mom day was exactly this.

And then I began having my own Mother's Days.  Apparently, Aaron didn't watch that episode of Sid the Science Kid and if he did, he forgot to take notes.

I've come to the conclusion that there are holiday people in the world and then there are what?  I'm supposed to do something on a holiday?  people.  I'm the former and married the latter.

I remember back in pre-marriage counseling talking about expectations.  At that point, we had such rose-colored glasses that we couldn't even fathom that there would be conflict in our marriage.  Ah, the sweetness of youth. 

I spent my first few Mother's Days angry.  I really thought Aaron would drop everything to treat me like a queen.  When he didn't, I would get upset.  This would confuse him and I would get more upset.  Clearly not a great path.  He could have gotten me a card for Angry Mom's Day those years.

On the path of getting better, a few years ago I thought outside the box and asked for Aaron to watch the 3 boys ages 3,3 and 1 at the time while I drove to meet my parents for lunch.  The city was about 45 minutes from our house and even though my mom was disappointed with not seeing her grandsons, it's frustrating for her that she and I rarely get to spend time together doing girl things.  This sounded like a perfect solution.  Except that the restaurant we chose was ridiculously crowded and I really don't care to wait for over an hour for a meal.  Oh well.

Last year Aaron and I got into a tiff over breakfast in bed.  In my mind, all moms get breakfast in bed on Mother's Day.  Nope.  That was just too unrealistic for me to expect.  The irony is that the boys really wanted to do it, so he caved and helped them do it.  I have a snapshot of the breakfast and me in bed receiving it.

Later, after church, we struck Mother's Day gold:  Dairy Queen.  While everyone else in the world was waiting to eat Sunday lunch at Olive Garden, we drove on in to Dairy Queen.  We enjoyed a lovely meal and they had the best dessert ever:  a blizzard with pretzel pieces.  Seriously.  So good. I decided this will be our Mother's Day lunch tradition.  No dishes to wash, no cooking, no line to wait in for a table, no behavior to worry about while we wait for the food and awesome blizzards.  This really is a fantastic idea.  I show make an ad for them and put it at the end of Sid the Science Kid.

This year, I've evolved even further:  I got myself my own gift a month ago.  There was a sale at Shutterfly so I asked mom what she wanted.  A photo book.  I made a lovely book that ironically enough had a collection of pictures from Mother's Days since I've been a mom.  It was really neat to look back on the boys at those times.  As I was making her book which she is going to LOVE, I saw that they have these little collage art pieces that are the perfect size to fit on top of my piano.  I made one of our camping trip.  I really, really love it.  When I look at it I'm reminded of a sweet moment in my mothering journey.  One of the pictures have all 3 of the boys on swings, one with his legs up in the air.  Such a perfect picture of where we are right now.

One of the trickiest parts of marriage is choosing how I'm going to feel about things instead of allowing Aaron's reactions dictate mine.  In an hour we're headed up the road a bit to meet my parents for Mother's Day.  This was my idea.  We'll meet up at 11 the day before Mother's Day and hopefully we can enjoy a meal and not have to wait in a huge line.  After, we're going to go to the city's wonderful park and the boys can play while we chat.

Aaron has work to do on the farm.  I made it clear he can stay here but he feels duty-bound to go with us.  He will be back home to have plenty of time to do more work this afternoon.  This is me, being a grown-up and saying that I'm going to enjoy this day with my family.  I am declaring it won't be Angry Mother's Day, reflecting his mood that he would prefer to be working on the farm.  I get a day, gosh darn it!  There's that anger again.  Maybe next year I'll be a bit further down this journey...