Changing holidays

Funny how holidays change as you move through different times in your life. Like Mother's Day for example.

When you're a kid, you make mom a gift, and later on buy her something with your allowance, and all you can think about is how cool the item is - you do very little thinking about what she'd like. Then later as you get older, you start to put some thought into it, but sometimes you realize you have no idea what mom wants because you still can't see her as not-mom, as a person with interests and tastes.

Hopefully at some point you figure it out and she at least gets something she wants from you.

Then if you're female, you might end up a mother yourself. That changes the whole holiday. At first, your children's father is the one orchestrating everything, and it's this stage of the game that contemporary Mother's Day ads, newspaper articles, and feel-good (but sappy, poorly written) poems seem to imagine is the only way that Mother's Day gets celebrated.

As this Mother's Day approached, that was the message I got - that if you didn't have a toddler who ran you ragged all day long but then looked like a little angels after they fell asleep, then the holiday wasn't quite for you.

Having teenagers who keep you up half the night worrying doesn't work as good on cute Mother's Day cards... unless they're humorous ones I suppose.

Over the years, I've wanted to boycott the holiday because it seems like the enforced interaction of the whole family together just brought out the worst in the kids and a fight would break out, ruining dinner etc.

But this year, I got just what I wanted, and I don't think they make a Hallmark card for this one: a dinner with all my kids together and NO fighting. Perfect!