MAMMA MIA. 5.14.06
Who doesn't love Mother's Day? Really, I'm serious: tell me who doesn't love Mother's Day so I can go spit in their faces and call them communists.
Does anybody else get that kind of vibe from this "holiday"? I can't stand it. It's one of the most disgusting marketing tactics I've ever seen: businesses know damn well that everyone has a mother, and that mothers have absolutely no qualms about putting massive guilt trips on their children... guilt trips which can only be reduced by showering said mothers with flowers, greeting cards, and anything else that gets spat onto TV screens and magazine pages with the phrase "Mother's Day" plastered on it.
You are helpless as a consumer. How the hell do you say, "I'm not going to buy anything for my mom" without looking like an ungrateful piece of shit? Why don't you just admit that you hate black people, or that you get a kick out of pushing little children into the middle of the road? It's consumer-based McCarthyism, and what makes it worse is that it wouldn't work at all if mothers would just learn to curb a little of that self-importance and pride. All that "appreciation" you think you deserve as a mother? Let me tell you a little something about that.
There is not a single person on this planet who specifically asked their mother to be born, or to have to go through 70+ years of emotional, physical, economic, and moral struggle. As a mother, you decided that you were going to put all of that on your kids, whether they want it or not. And now you want appreciation for being the one who took responsibility for your actions? I appreciate mothers like mine, who go way beyond the call of a mother; simply being a nurturing caregiver doesn't get you any respect in my book. Those are basic tenets of motherhood, and motherhood was your decision, not the child's.
Bottom line: if your mother is like mine, and actually deserves praise on a day like this, show your appreciation with something creative and personal- something that can't be rung up on the register. She'll learn to love that more than the $20 bouquet and Hallmark card, trust me. Cut the businesses out of the equation; they have nothing to do with your relationship to your mother.
If your mother isn't in that former group, then what are you really doing on this day? Thanking her for feeding and clothing you, like she should be doing? Any woman would agree that farting out a baby and leaving it on the hospital floor does not satisfy the requirements for being a mother. There must be other responsibilities to be fulfilled before a woman can say, "I'm a mother." If you have young children, don't think for a second that you don't owe them everything... you put them on this earth, a place you know damn well is full of suffering and confusion. You'd better do your part to alleviate as much of that suffering as possible, because at the root, you're the one who brought it on. Motherhood is a full-time job that you willingly applied for; nobody ever got Employee of the Month just because they came to work every day.