The Amazing Average Guy and The Disturbing Truth About Mother's Day

    As of this writing, I have yet to wish my own mother a Happy Mother's Day. I am truly a bad seed. Work and other inexcusable activities kept me from doing so, but I'll call her later and send her flowers. I'm her first born son. She'll understand. :-)

I hope you had a fantastic Mother's Day. I hope your family loved on you and sent you cards and lavished gifts on you until you just couldn't take anymore and you had to yell "ENOUGH!!" I hope it was one for the record books. Congratulations. You deserve it.

Mother's Day was first celebrated in 1908 when one Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother, then campaigned to make Mother's Day a national holiday. She succeeded in 1914, but by the 1920's she became disgusted with its commercialization and was even arrested for disturbing the peace when she and her sister campaigned against what the holiday had become. According to her New York Times obituary in 1948, she became embittered because too many people sent their mothers a printed greeting card. She was quoted as saying,

"A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment."

Perhaps it's no surprise that Anna Jarvis died unmarried and without children. But I think I judge her too harshly.

I look back to my own childhood and I can remember what a huge part my mom played in my life. "Well, yeah," you say. "She's your mother." True, true. She did what other mothers did. Changed my diapers. Made sure I ate. Kissed my boo-boos. And, really, there were a lot of boo-boos. It was the 1970s. I had a Big Wheel and cousins in the country. Lots and lots of road rash, skinned knees in the creek, and my favorite: poison ivy. Although with that, there was less kissing and more calamine. Chicken pox in the fourth grade during the classroom screening of my still favorite Halloween film.... the Disney version of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". There was a lot of calamine with that, too.

I got punished a lot, too. I got spankings. With switches and leather belts. Those punishments were the rudder of my adolescent life. I look back and I see that now. When my family moved to Tennessee from Ohio after my dad lost his job and the kids in my new school picked on me because I had a wicked stutter and a Northern accent, my mom gave me the courage to go back the next day. She took me swimming. A lot. My mom took me to see Star Wars. She took me to see "Superman: The Movie" one Friday night in 1978 even though it meant missing "Dallas". When my kids were born and I had no idea what I was doing as a parent, I called my mom. When I went through a painful divorce and spent the next few years practically penniless and fighting just to stay above water and keep my kids fed and clothed, my mom never hesitated to send me money. Sometimes I asked. Sometimes I didn't.

And I could go on and on and on.

The disturbing truth about Mother's Day? We have to have a day to celebrate her. When it really should be just one more day out of 365 that we're celebrating her.

Maybe Anna Jarvis was on to something. Have you tried to get a card for Mother's Day at Walmart? Anna Jarvis would be livid, I think. 365 days to tell our mothers we love them. 364 of those are used for whatever else we do and we use one day to run around and act like savages at our local department store to do what we already should have been doing.

And I actually told my mom I loved her the day before Mother's Day. And the day before that. And a couple of days before that. I pretty much tell her whenever I talk to her. But I missed yesterday. Not too shabby, really. Maybe I'm not such a bad seed, after all.

But don't sweat it, Mom. The flowers will be there tomorrow.