Do Not Read Until 12:01 AM

If you have a baby, have had a baby, or ever plan on having a baby, you should read Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions. It's brilliant and funny and scary and heartbreaking and I read it three times in the last year and a half alone, first to learn, then to reassure, then to remember, as I went from pregnant to new mom to not-so-new mom.

Lamott's piece on (in?) Salon.com this weekend is entitled, "Why I Hate Mother's Day." And although the people-pleaser in me was all squeamish at the idea that some people might be offended, I agree with her. Not necessarily about hating the day, but I am, at best, ambivalent about it these days. I found myself nodding and murmuring, yes, exactly, as my heart broke a bit when I read, "I hate the way the holiday makes all non-mothers, and the daughters of dead mothers, and the mothers of dead or severely damaged children, feel the deepest kind of grief and failure."

I am, I'm fully aware, blessed beyond reason to have my healthy, happy boy, and for him, I want to celebrate being a mom. And I'm touched by the two cards at my plate this morning at breakfast (one from MOTH, one from Tankbaby, plus a crayon-pocked piece of paper that MOTH describes as an example of Tankbaby's "pointillism period"), and if MOTH takes the baby to the store later so that I can have an hour or two to do "whatever I want, because it's [your] day," well, who am I to complain?

This is only my second Mother’s Day, and I’m still adjusting to that being a part of my identity: I am a mom. Even writing that seems odd to me, still. When I think of “mom,” I think not of myself, but of my own mother. For the first 30-odd years of my life, Mother’s Day was about her. So I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that this day evokes grief first, as the daughter who lost her mom, instead of the joy of being a mom. I fully expect that to change over time, but right now, I still cringe during the radio ads and snarl unnecessarily at the on-line florist coupons that bombard my e-mail and avoid the card aisle all together. It’s not as sharply painful as the first Mother’s Day without her (which, of course, happened to fall exactly one month after her death, because the universe is like that sometimes), but it’s still inexorably linked in my mind. It takes several minutes, or an outside voice, to remind me that this day can now be about something else. And for my sister, who doesn’t yet have any kids, this holiday is still one-dimensional, and it’s about loss. That will change for her, too, someday, as it continues to change for me. But I think we both know that it may never be totally without grief, without resentment, without jealousy.

And, as Lamott points out, it’s not just those of us without moms who are gut-punched by this holiday. As a preschool teacher, I think I’m contractually obligated to have the kids make some sort of sunny, cheerful Mother’s Day art project of some sort, preferably something that points out how quickly time flies and is guaranteed to evoke a few tears. And I did, in fact, have several little yellow and red handprints going home this week. But the words “Mother’s Day” were intentionally left out. Because in one of my groups, I have two kids with moms in jail, one kid whose schizophrenic, drug-affected biological mom gave birth to him on a psych ward, two kids whose moms have just up and left the family, one kid who was just last week put into foster care…you get the idea. These kids can take their handprints and cheesy poems home to whoever they like, but I’m not going to ask them to celebrate a holiday that is puzzling to your average four-year-old and devastating to the four-year-olds I work with. And we all know adults who fit into this category, as well. I would not trade my dead mom for some live moms I know. As Lamott says, “…many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother's love is withering.”

And then I think of my friends who want kids but don’t yet have them. Like the rest of us, it’s not that it’s not painful on an ordinary day, but to have a day—and a day that is preceded by so much media hype, replete with blanket clichés and inexplicable linen sales—specifically designed to focus attention on the very thing we lack (be it a mother or our own motherhood)…well, it seems tedious at best, cruel at worst.

I guess I feel about Mother’s Day the way a perpetually single or recently divorced or widowed person feels about Valentine’s Day. And yet, it’s much more socially acceptable to curse Cupid and his boxes of chocolate. Anyone who hates Mother’s Day must be an unlovable commie, right? Well, maybe I am. And I suppose I make it worse by saying that, unlike Lamott, I don’t want my kid to boycott the holiday. I’m looking forward to those burnt toast breakfasts in bed and yellow handprints. I guess I’m hoping one day not to hate the holiday, or at least to hate it only on the (totally valid) principles that Lamott lays out, instead of hating it for what it does to me personally. I hope that one day I can hate it for being a holiday of exclusivity, instead of just because I’m feeling excluded.

Until then, I will continue to say and receive the words “Happy Mother’s Day” without rancor, but with a slight lump in my throat. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear them, it just means that they don’t make a card for what I’m feeling today.