Mother's Day

0511081047.jpg
Originally uploaded by karijean

Yeah, it was a while ago, so what?

Mother's Day has been hard. For years. No one who hasn't had problems getting pregnant can adequately understand the sort of visceral pain that Mother's Day can be. Wait, that's a lot of negatives. Suffice it to say, I can try to describe to you what the dread is like, leading up to it, what the ads on TV, the sales in the stores, the cards at the grocery store, your friends' and family who are mothers, what the actual day is like, what the compilation of all of that does to you, but unless you've been there, it's all just words.

I did pretty okay with it, personally speaking. I think, anyway. By that I mean, I functioned, I talked about it, I didn't burst into tears at every JC Penny ad. Especially the ads about jewelry because do people really do that? Give diamonds for Mother's Day? But there would be times when it just hurt.

Especially, oh, especially the Mother's Day after my miscarriage. So many other people close to me, pregnant, and not me.

So maybe I expected this Mother's Day to be EXTRA SUPER DUPER AWESOME. I was finally in the club! I would learn the handshake and hear the secrets and make the oaths!

Andrew gave me the sweetest card ever, short and to the point, from him and Howie (I bet Howie picked it out), and a gift certificate to a massage (which, oh, I can't wait to use it!). And I love him for it. But it felt odd, unnatural, not quite comfortable yet. Maybe because I was such a new mom (seriously, Howie was like two weeks old at that point.)

But honestly, my favorite part of Mother's Day*? Was giving the gift we'd made for my mom.

Earlier that week, my sister and I had realized we had nothing for my mom for Mother's Day** and I said, "Well, I win, because I gave her a grandchild." Lee thought for a minute and said, "Hey, so did I." I looked at her. "For that matter, so did our brother."

Three new grandbabies, three words in "Happy Mother's Day"....

Mix in digital photography, email, Walgreens online photo submission, a three-way photo frame from Target and you have my mother's Mother's Day gift. Not bad for thinking of it on a Tuesday before Mother's Day.

My mom--remember, this is when she was visiting her newest grandbabie and about to buy a house and decide to move out to Oregon--lurrrrrved it. She loved it so much, she made a slightly larger version for my grandmother (making these great-grandbabies). And I have to say, I'm pretty proud of it.

But that's my favorite thing about Mother's Day 2008. Not that I was finally a mother, like some pinnacle I'd reached as if it was a milestone to be checked off. Rather, now that the painful part of Mother's Day is gone and I can finally see the day as a chance to give my mom something silly and sweet to savor for the forseeable future without the reminder of pain. And that feels good.

Now, if anyone has amazing ideas of what to do for Father's Day--I'm all (virtual) ears.

* It was at this point in the blog post that I officially got fed up with typing "Mother's Day" because every single time, I'd not capitalize it and have to go back and capitalize it--and I had the argument with myself about capitalizing but realized that if I decided not to capitalize it--mother's day--to make myself happy I'd have to go back and uncapitalize all the "Mother's Day"'s I'd already typed and that would piss me off even more.

Welcome to the inner workings of my personal issues.

**Yup, did the same thing there, and had the same argument with myself.