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May 6, 2016

Here’s a “Get Out of Mother’s Day Free” Card for Anyone Who Wants it.

 

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I open up my e-mail and Peepers.com wishes me a Happy Mother’s Day.

So does Fredrick’s of Hollywood, Maynard’s Restaurant,Forks over Knives Cooking and even e-Harmony (no better Day to get an invitation to join e-Harmony than Mother’s Day, right?).

I’m telling you, I am going to have one helluva’ Mother’s Day. I can already tell.

There is no doubt in my mind that even Donald Trump will Tweet or Instagram—or whatever it is that Donald Trump does besides insulting me for being a woman in the first place—a picture of himself cutting into a big cake baked in the one and only kitchen of Trump Towers “I Love Mothers” the words will say.

“I love politicians” I will tweet back.

Wrong.

In the meantime there will be all the memes. Oh, my God, the memes. The “I miss my mother,” “Click if you love your mother,” “Mothers, the most unselfish people in the world” memes.

Almost makes me prefer Peepers. After all, they’re just trying to sell me a product—not so much an image or a concept.

See. I wasn’t all that great a mother.

I certainly wasn’t the kind of mother one would make a meme about.

I was—as one of my daughters said—the kind of mother who “Mothered by Note.” I would leave notes for them to find when they got home from school that said things like “C, put the chicken in the oven,” and “M, make some chocolate chip cookies for dinner,” and to the other M, “Please start the laundry.”

I was so into “Mothering by Note” that I would actually leave blank signed notes for my daughters to fill out with whatever excuse they wanted to bring to school.

“My daughter was unable to do her homework last night due to an unexpected family emergency, Thank you.” Signed. Me.

It was also that same daughter that said (why is it there is always one of your children who seems to be able to sum up her childhood with pithy comments from the time they are three years old?),

“Mom, we were latch key kids before the term latch key kids was invented.”

Am I the only mother in the world who when each and every one of those daughters, all grown up with children of their own—to whom they are way better mothers than I ever was to them—feels funny about getting all those Mother’s Day cards and gifts?

I mean, I honestly think I should give them back.

“Save the money. I wasn’t that great a mother.”

One year I called them all up. “I am giving you a Get out of Mother’s Day Free Card. No Gifts. No flowers. No dinners out. No nothing but just us being us and me being the mother you had, instead of the meme mother.”

They ignored me.

I got calls and cards and stuff from them anyways.

Now I’m a Nana. That’s kind of like being a mother-squared—and I’m not very good at being a Nana, either.

I mean, seriously? Do “real” Nanas get e-mails from Fredrick’s of Hollywood?

At least there aren’t quite as many Nana/Grandma Day memes as there are Mother’s Day memes.

As for Donald Trump and his Tweets to Nanas?

I don’t even want to go there.

 

 

 

 

Author: Carmelene Siani

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Martin Alonso at Flickr 

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