MOTHER’S DAY seems like a straightforward holiday — buy a gift, buy a card, send some flowers, go out to dinner. Make sure Mom still knows you love her, even though you are so busy these days.
But, like most holidays, Mother’s Day is more complicated than that. Taking one day out of the year to celebrate one of the most important relationships in most peoples’ lives places heavy expectations on one Sunday in May. The urge is to try to orchestrate a perfect day, and there is nothing like striving for perfection to make some folks feel totally inadequate. It can be, in short, a bittersweet day.
For those whose mothers have died, Mother’s Day can be a day of unalloyed sorrow, given over to memories of precious days lost and irretrievable.
Of course, that is exactly what no mother would want her child to feel.
How can we take the heavy load off Mother’s Day and make it a day of love and not of thwarted self-expectation and obligation? Make it just another Mother’s Day — one of 365 in the year.
It is never a bad day to tell Mom you love her, or to remember her with fondness. It is never a bad day to be a surrogate mom to a motherless child — of any age.
People today have more ways of communicating than at any time in history. By mail, telephone, cell phone, e-mail, text or tweet, the messages fly without interruption 24 hours a day. There is rarely any good excuse for losing touch with those you love, including your mother.
And any day you tell your mother you love her is Mother’s Day.
Before you ask, yes, the same thing goes for Father’s Day.