Whew, Ladies.
We survived another Mother’s Day. One that is annually filled with joy, odd expectations and sometimes quiet sorrow. As one of my many sisters in laws summed it, it truly is a day that makes us all reflect.
It is a wonderful holiday, created and recognized with greeting cards and a little bit of guilt if your card doesn’t arrive on time. Or God forbid you forgot.
It always falls on probably the most beautiful, hopeful month of the year. All you need is a box of tissues for the memories and the pollen. And a good sense of humor. Because mothers’ Mother’s Day around the world reminds us to smile and make sure everyone else is okay at the same time.
We are good at that.
I hope everyone’s Mother’s Day brought special joy like mine did. I heard from my children and family and friends near and very far, many unexpectedly.
These are moms who have survived all kinds of illness, lost mittens and homework, missing socks and dogs throwing up in the middle of it all while packing the ten thousandth peanut butter sandwich in time to make the bus.
I am blessed also by the phone calls and messages I received from guys who ate those sandwiches made by their own moms, not by me. It is a day of decency and respect.
They are mentors, teachers, counselors, aunts, godmothers and godfathers, neighbors, walking buddies and volunteers. They are beautiful people with purpose and a nice comment to just recognize the day as it was meant to be.
American Anna Jarvis created the day’s moniker in 1904 in recognition of her own mother’s many sacrifices. With great amounts of lobbying, Mother’s Day was officially recognized as a national holiday ten years later in 1914, signed into eternal lure by President Woodrow Wilson.
For those of you with Philadelphian roots, you may be interested to know that it was Anna Jarvis’s friend, legendary retailer John Wanamaker who funded her efforts to make Mother’s Day an official holiday.
From what I have read, Mr. Wanamaker loved and profited from the concept. And so. the commercialization of Mother’s Day began.
Ms. Jarvis, who remained unmarried and without children of her own in her lifetime was not in the end happy with how the holiday begot profits for entrepreneurs. She even tried to halt Mother’s Day from becoming a nationally recognized day.
She did not appreciate that Mother’s Day became a moneymaker for thousands of today’s greeting card factories and florists.
Regardless, it’s a great American story of a courageous woman who set out to honor motherhood as it was meant to be and cherished.
Funny, we all get Labor Day off as a national holiday, but mothers still have to be mothers on the second Sunday of every May.
Happy belated Mother’s Day, all moms and dads and children.
