A Mother’s Day Confessional

I hesitate to write this, because it may come off as ungrateful. It probably will. BUT on the flip side it might also come off as relatable, fairly mature and astute. SO here goes. I didn’t love my mothers day. There I said it. I know it’s sacrilegious to write that but it’s true. My mothers day really began the night before. I was in bed about 3/4 of the way onto dreamland and I could hear my older chocolate lab pacing back and forth in the bedroom. After telling him to hush a few thousand times, I smell this god awful rank smell, like someone has thrown an explosive diaper into the bedroom. Joe and I quickly jump up and throw open the door, but in the meantime, Ralphie has proceeded to soil every square inch of carpeting in his wake. As we both sit there scrubbing up the fecal smears all over the house at 11:00 at night, cursing the lack of rental vacs we know we can’t acquire the next day, I knew this was a bad omen. We finally go back to sleep and in an hour, Ralphie starts his fecal spatter all over gain. This continues on the hour all night. I was both parts seized by worry at the fact that this could be the beginning of the end for my 13-year-old companion, and also screaming to the sleep Gods about taking away my right to lay down. As the lightest sleeper in the house, I was awake with him at 4 am, barely making it to the door to let him outside, and looking through the cleaning spray cupboard for anything that would make a light colored carpet look less like a crime scene from the Cookie Monster brought to you by irritable bowel syndrome. In that moment, Ralphie came over and looked at me with the most pathetic, embarrassed, doggie faced expression that it just made me stop in my tracks. I sat cross legged with him on the bathroom floor and he put his head in my lap, like Mom please make this stop. Meanwhile, the pug was observing us calmly from his cage, wondering how on Earth someone had made a bigger mess than him and was there anyway he could contribute.

When I finally nodded off to sleep, I woke up to the sounds of clanging in the kitchen and my kids helping Joe make me breakfast, which is more of the highlight of the day. The three of them contributed to the breakfast buffet, which included gluten free pancakes (because that was our Walmart substitution), scrambled eggs and grapes. Not bad right? A for effort. Mid breakfast, Natalie proclaimed it was gift time and handed me a sparkly, purple gift bag that looked familiar. Inside were three bottles of nail polish, that I had given her for Christmas. Okay, insert big fake smile, that’s fine , it’s a Covid gift right, just a jumping off point. Before I write the next part, let me say my husband is the best gift giver on the planet. He is thoughtful, he is a planner, he really goes after the heart strings. I have been spoiled beyond belief in our time together. With hungry gift accepting eyes, I see him push a brown paper bag toward me, that looks an awful lot like the brown paper bag my sister asked him to pick up for my mother. I open it up and it is a gift card to the Senator, which is also conveniently the same gift card that my mom received and Joe offered to pick up. So this is where this post is going to go off into REAL WORLD- West Gardiner. I was bummed when I opened this gift and I know, look I know that this makes me an ungrateful fill in the blank. But mommas, hear me when I say this. You work hard day in and day out and you have been working extra hard during these viral times. I had set expectations so high even Clark Griswold couldn’t attain them. I love hand-me-down nail polishes and lego built castles like the rest of them, but I was heart broken, at no breakfast brunch out to eat, no card with the mushy gushies on it, no seafood lunch cook out with my mom, no necklace that read you a bad ass bitch Rona Momma. I think between the dog shit and the cleaning fumes, I had forgotten how busy my husband has been and how little access my kids had to a store and I had envisioned a butler waking me up, handing me a robe and leading me into a massage room, where Sam Smith was singing in one corner and the other corner smelled like baking muffins and the last corner had a hallway that led right out onto the beach. I thought the next few hours would transform me right to the Bachelor house where different men would admire me and then I would witness a Magic Mike dance off contest.

The rest of the day proceeded with me being a passive aggressive sloth and Joe rage cleaning for a lot of the day. I write this not so that you can send Joe a message that reads whats it like being married to an ice queen? Although, feel free to do so if that suits your fancy. But also so that I can write after a good scream fight, and a check in with my invisible therapist, I came to the realization that I was really grieving the loss of all the Mother’s Days and the holidays that have come before that don’t involve social distancing. I want to continue in my holiday traditions and not have the fun sucked out of the room by face masks. I also put expectations on my family that they didn’t realize were there and then screamed at them Jersey Shore style, when nobody delivered. I told them in the future, I was just going to say Momma wants a new bedspread and a box of sea salt covered chocolates, or I want 2 new workout pants and a bottle of my favorite wine, or I want three hours to myself and all the laundry folded. I know some Moms who are happy with a vase of handpicked flowers and a piece of computer paper that has a crayoned outline of a heart, but I am not one of those Moms. I do wear a crown on mothers day and I earned it, BUT and here is where the maturity piece comes in and I told you I was getting to it, it doesn’t give me a right to throw that crown all around the house. As a true empath, I feel all the feels at all the moments, but I feel guilt the most and I had to apologize profusely to everyone in the house repeatedly. I am happy to say we ended the day with takeout from the Depot, three visits to the important Mommas in our life and an estimate for a brand new carpet.