Last Wednesday when I went to collect Jake’s things from his classroom at the end of the day I noticed that all the cubbies had notes instructing parents to pick up the Mother’s Day gifts awaiting them on nearby shelves. All the cubbies, that is, except Jake’s.
I wish it weren’t true, but it is: My heart did a little disappointed, collapsing ka-thump.
Telling myself that I just wanted to be sure I didn’t miss something — not that I was, you know, hurt that Jake might not have made me a Mother’s Day gift — I scanned the line of cards saying “I love you” attached to bud vases containing a single pink rose. And, sure enough, none of them had Jake’s name on them.
“Jake?” I asked, aiming for a neutral, not-disappointed, just-gathering-information tone. “Did you make one of these?” I conscientiously avoided using guilt-inducing terms like “gift for me” so as to put off for as long as possible the inevitable moment when I will brand my child with the scalding guilt for which my people are renowned.
“Nope,” he answered before running out into the hall to play with his friend Wendell.
I recalled that morning when we had arrived to find his classmates hard at work at the art table spread with the raw ingredients for the lovely gifts now assembled before me. And just as clearly I recalled how Jake had shown not the slightest interest in them — about the same amount of interest he tends to show in any art project that does not involve pirate stickers or sparkly glue sticks.
“Are you sure?” I yelled after him, reluctant to concede that there was nothing for me. Not because I was disappointed, I promised myself. Just because I wouldn’t want a pretty flower to languish, unappreciated, overnight.
Jake was so sure, in fact, that he didn’t bother to interrupt his play with Wendell to reassure his mother. So at least I didn’t have to worry about the guilt part.
This made it even nicer come Friday afternoon when Mike and Jake strolled into Lily’s class at pick up holding a bud vase with a beautiful, fresh, pink rose.
“This is for you, Mommy,” Jake said, bursting with pride. Jake’s teachers seemed to have solved the aversion to art problem by allowing Jake to decorate his card with a series of stamps with hearts on them, which was plenty good enough for me.
“This is so beautiful,” I cried, and Jake beamed. Now he got Mother’s Day.
And so did I. Normally — “normal” referring to the previous four Mother’s Days on which I have qualified for the honor — I’ve brushed aside Mike’s attempts to figure out what I might actually want to have him do for me on Mother’s Day.
“Too sick to do anything,” I moaned on that first one when I was about ten weeks pregnant and so constantly nauseated that I felt I was doing Mike the favor by managing to eat the beautiful omelet he made for me.
“Whatever your mother wants,” I said on my second Mother’s Day, still awash in the glow of being a mother at all, not to mention visiting my mother-in-law’s house where I could actually hand five-month-old Jake to someone else every so often.
“Nothing,” I grumbled tearfully on my third Mother’s Day when postpartum depression had belatedly overcome me. That Mike persevered says a lot more about him than about me in those days because I guarantee you I was not the sort of person for whom you would voluntarily do nice things.
And then last year we had our second child, two-month-old Lily. And, in true second child tradition, Mike and I have completely forgotten what we did with her on Mother’s Day.
But yesterday I participated. I embraced a day in which my family — in whatever ways they were capable at their different stages of cognitive development — took care of me. For the first time, I told Mike what I wanted. And, for the first time, I actually believed I deserved something special for Mother’s Day.
Let’s face it. It’s a greeting card holiday. And in that sense I tend to discount it. In much the same way I more or less dissed Father’s Day until the year Mike pointed out that a last-minute “gift” of Jake’s footprints sloshing across a piece of construction paper in blue paint pretty much hurt his feelings. In other words, maybe it was time for me to appreciate all he did as a father.
Fair enough. But appreciate what I do as a mother? Not so easy.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of how I mother. I love my kids so overwhelmingly that hugs and kisses and “I love you’s” happen at least fifty to a hundred times every day. I’m mostly patient, mostly have a sense of humor when I’m not, and have succeeded in not having to go to the emergency room in three and a half years. (Though there was that dash to the doctor’s for Jake’s stitches.)
But special appreciation for doing what I think my children deserve?
It was only after I told Mike — laughing, really — about my exclusion from the Wednesday Mother’s Day gift-giving that I was willing to let myself want and deserve a little special recognition. I don’t know that I saw it that way at the time, but in retrospect the timing tells me something: I laughed about not getting a gift from Jake and when Mike asked what I did want, I told him I wanted a massage.
Actually, I told him about my fantasy in which he buys me a student massage because he knows I will say we can’t afford luxuries like a massage for me and so he will find a way for us to afford them. Mike, being either more realistic or more generous than I or both, got me a real, day spa, sixty-minutes-of-heaven, honest to goodness massage.
But here’s the thing: That little bit of illogical, largely unearned disappointment when my three-year-old didn’t bother to make me a card to attach to a vase for a holiday about which he didn’t yet have a clue suggested that maybe I do believe I deserve a some of the celebration. Maybe not as much as a whole massage, but if I’m lucky enough to be married to someone who believes not only that I do deserve it but that I should have it no matter what our current circumstances, then who am I to complain?
And here’s what’s even more amazing to me. I enjoyed it without once feeling guilty about leaving Mike alone with the kids. Okay, maybe a twinge when I arrived home two hours later — having spent an extra half hour in the quiet room reading Cosmopolitan and drinking citrus water — to him declaring, “Lily didn’t nap.”
But guilt, I realized, doesn’t mean you don’t deserve the time you spent not taking care of your children. In fact, it might just mean that you take care of them so constantly, feel so responsible for taking care of them, that maybe you deserve a break even more.
It’s a fuller way of thinking about ahimsa, nonharming. I fully embrace the concept when it comes to trying to avoid harming others, with the possible exception of those ants that keep tracking across my kitchen counters.
And I can stretch myself to practice ahimsa in not harming myself when it means not attempting a handstand in the middle of the room where I am likely to fall and fracture a vertebra.
But with this, my fifth official Mother’s Day, I finally appreciated that practicing ahimsa means even more. It’s not just pretending you’re not doing anything actively harmful to yourself when you give up your own sleep to rub your baby’s back in the middle of the night because she has the sniffles and then don’t even try to find time for a catch-up nap the next day.
Practicing ahimsa in a full, tiptoeing-toward-enlightenment way means being kind to yourself. Taking breaks that refresh you. Walking away if you need to. Letting go of the constant belief that there is a way to be a better mother and you are too selfish to find it. Loving yourself for exactly the way in which you love your children.
It still doesn’t seem quite right to say Mother’s Day is about taking a break from the very beings who have conferred the honor of Mother’s Day upon me. But if Mother’s Day is about appreciating just a little bit more what being a mother really is — and even about being a mother to myself now and then — then I think I’ve finally earned it.