So, I've got mixed feelings about Mother's Day, for a lot of the usual reasons - I love my mother and my grandmothers and like having a day to celebrate them, but I know any number of people for whom it's a day to miss their mothers or to wish they had different relationships with their mothers, or who can't have children, or who are raising them under problematic circumstances, or children who never had a mother to begin with, or, or.... This is especially true as I get further into adulthood and have to ponder the chances of ever being a mother myself.
Still, I like Mother's Day and Father's Day as long as I don't think too hard about it. If I didn't have two significant papers looming, I'd be working on a project that's in the back of my head - an art piece using images from my family's history - both sides, pieces we'd rather not think about (plantations, for instance), pieces we're proud of (signing the Declaration, Lucretia Coffin Mott, etc). If I could pull it off well, it would make a good mother's/father's day gift to my parents. I might try my hand at it this summer when I'm home, even though it will be badly timed for a gift.
Instead - well, I was going to offer a Mother's Day song. But I can't find the lyrics anywhere and I don't myself own the recording (my mother does). So, um, happy Mother's Day, everyone.
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It helps to remember that it was meant as an anti-war protest from mothers who lost sons in the US Civil War and not a marketing campaign of the greeting-card industry, nor an occasion to try to manufacture greeting-card-like sentiment when it's not called for (or feeling guilty when it's not).
I'm far from a Communist but the Russians have about the right idea with their celebration of the Soviet-era International Women's Day when you give flowers to all the great ladies in your life - relatives, significant others, colleagues, anybody.
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