Nothing Says "I Love Mom" Like a Pink Baseball Bat

This is just.....

Last week, after a perfectly lovely Mother’s Day, Seth wondered aloud as to where the boys will “take him” for his Father’s Day weekend. “Las Vegas?” he mused. “Although I hear Nashville and Miami are very nice, too!”

....stupid.

It appears that Seth was under the delusion, after having been exposed to the hoopla and huzzahs that Mother’s Day has become, that he is entitled to an extravaganza, as well---specifically, a "bachelor" type party complete with strippers, drunken tattooing and other shenanagins. 

Once I was able to convince him that this is not the case for Father’s Day (including that his days of strippers and shenanagins are now strictly visible only in his rear view mirror) and deal with the pouting and comfort eating that followed, I had to agree that Seth’s perceptions about Mother’s Day are correct.

A sweet little holiday has blown up into something unrecognizable from not only my youth where mom got a homemade card and a hug but even my years as a young mama where the card and hug rule still applied.

Our immersion in social media is greatly to blame, wouldn’t you agree?

Can you spare a few
wire hangers? I'm running low.

Several days before the second Sunday in May, many of us start searching the archives for adorable photos of ourselves with our mothers and we slap them up on Facebook, plastering our “walls” with cute sayings and art that has been created for this purpose alone.

I noticed that almost all of my friends’ kids were also changing their profile pictures to include their mothers and I spent the week in a cold sweat---would my sons do this?

My boys, who, for the most part, seem to like me just fine, are notoriously removed from most seasonal dictates and the corresponding social media mayhem. No, I reasoned….they would not.

I would be humiliated.

Come see, Woody! He looks just
like Frank Sinatra!

So I started my campaign: dropping hints, emailing them irresistible photos of us smiling into the camera—hoping they would choose to pin our private affection to the public busom of Facebook like those giant bubble gum corsages from many decades ago--penny Bazookas sewn together with a ribbon and worn for a special day. Well, hell, didn’t I always want one of those when I was little?

People will think those ingrates don’t love me, I privately lamented as more and more Facebook tributes popped up until finally, they did it (boys, I’ll put the checks in the mail later today). Whew!

See, world---they love me, they really do!

There are brunches and lunches with photo ops and exhausted florists making deliveries for 48 hours straight as they bunch posies, wrap raffia and exchange quizzical looks when faced with transcribing cards where one brother, who shall remain unnamed, horribly insults the other brother in the card of his own mother’s bouquet…just before signing it “Love, Charlie.”

The stores promote countless sales. Restaurants offer Mom free sundaes. News anchors smugly remind us again and again not to dare and forget the momentous day. Even professional baseball players are forced to wear pink cleats and helmets and hit with pink bats in honor of Mom. There was enough bright pink on the field last week when the Mets played, to confuse any self-respecting flamingo enjoying a Mother’s Day Mimosa in the stands.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved it. I ate it up like the attention whore I’ve always been (thanks, Mom).

Posting photos, opening cards, smiling at my reflection in the mylar of my balloons and fielding phone calls, I was Eve in the Garden of Eden on the very first Mother’s Day. 

She, too, wondered if her boys would remember and it actually did get a little dicey since this was before Al Gore invented the internet. But Eve’s kids managed to mail their cards on time and everything was just fine until all that unpleasantness began with the apples and the snakes.

I'm very worried the kids will forget it's Mother's Day! After all,
it's the first one!!

"Oh, Joffrey...come give mama a big hug."

My son, Tom, was home for Mother’s Day and we followed a drinking game’s rules while binge-watching Game of Thrones. Instead of tossing back a shot, Tom had to hug me whenever someone was disemboweled, mutilated or suffered a hideous amputation in a sword fight. This made for lots of hugging so mama was happy. 

Father’s Day simply hasn’t achieved the status of Mother’s Day. Oops, too bad. I take good care of Seth every day so if he wants an extra slice of cheese in his sandwich on June 19, I’ll see what I can do. Where he got this idea about a weekend of craziness in a penthouse suite in Vegas, I don’t know but if he calls you to organize it, please just hang up. 

As for “Susan Says,” she enjoyed her day greatly. I hope all you lovely mothers reading this did, too.

A philosophy I have tried to live by.