One can also commemorate the day by posting this link in an email, text, or FB posting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDWR5RkWRTY
I expect a little effort. We go out to eat the night before. On Mothers Day, it’s really just a normal day, but it’s nice to be remembered in the morning. I’m happy with a card. My kids actually write the sweetest things in cards, even at their ages, which I keep. But a little trinket is still fun to open that they’ve chosen.
DH makes the most effort. I’ll probably get a card, flowers and a gift; he’ll also cook a nice dinner (we discovered long ago that going out to eat on Mother’s Day is zoo-ey). Beyond the card and homemade dinner, I don’t really need the rest.
We were just out in CA to visit S1 and DIL. S sneaked a card into my suitcase which I’ll open tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll also call.
S2 will send a card, but whether or not it gets here in time is questionable. He sometimes doesn’t give the USPS enough time. Calling doesn’t always happen every year either, so that will be a surprise.
I am lucky that Mother’s day is still my mother’s day. I spend almost every mother’s day with my mom except when I was out of town. We usually celebrated me later. This year is no different. The girls and I are spending the day with my mom. The girls are taking me out for brunch next Sat.
NBD. I send card to my mom and as usual it’ll be late getting to her as I just mailed it yesterday. But I just saw her last weekend at a family function, so. I will call her, but we talk almost everyday anyway. S will call me. H will give me a card. We never go out to brunch or dinner on MD. Weather here is going to be horrid so I’m planning on doing nothing more than couch surfing.
Like @garland and @Wellspring, mother’s day is no big deal for me and my family. I am lucky that everyday is “mother’s day,” as Wellspring describes. I don’t need a special day. And if everyday were not mother’s day for me, I wouldn’t want to have to spend the day with family pretending that everything is wonderful. I read a great article this AM about that, “‘Happy’ not part of Mother’s Day for everyone”.
http://jewishjournal.com/culture/lifestyle/mothers_day/218881/happy-not-part-mothers-day-everyone/
When the kids were really little H pulled the “you’re not my mom” baloney, and I said “you made me a mother, you have skin in the game.”
It’s a day to celebrate all mothers, not just your mother, in my opinion. Without them none of y’all would be here :). If you celebrated every day, I don’t think it would be as meaningful-like if you had fireworks every night, at some point you’d get tired of the fireworks.
We typically go out to brunch with extended family that morning, and the girls will get me something cute and a card. H is taking me out on date night tonight, which is perfect. I want to see an effort made for the day-that’s one of my love languages.
I love Mother’s Day, and making something for mine. Our tradition is that the Mother/father/birthday child – whoever the honoree is for the day, gets to decide what we are doing. Sometimes we just watch a movie, and I enjoy being together . I know for some women it is fraught with many emotions, and I respect that, but just as I don’t resent holidays that aren’t “mine” ( Diwali, Father’s Day, BOxing Day) I would not want Mother’s Day to try and encompass every female on the planet in a misguided sense of inclusion. After all, there is more to being female than only being a mom, so maybe we shouldn’t act like it’s the worst suffering ever to not be one (if it’s a choice).
I’ll call my mother. I’m on my way back from a retreat center and forgot to bring along a card to mail out to her.
My one kid just posted a photo from our last Disney trip on Facebook and said she’s bringing me back in November. Nice gift! The other will not acknowledge the day but that’s okay. She and I have a delicate relationship these days.
I’m spending a couple of days on vacation on my way back from my retreat. I’ll buy myself a gift at the photography studio in my favorite Adirondacks village.
This year my H has arranged for two of my children to come over for lunch and the afternoon. I don’t need presents but I am happy that we can be together. I hope the sun is out and we can sit outside. We will miss our other child but she actually this year sent a cute gift that came yesterday. She will celebrate the day with her future MIL and future grandmother in law.
Usually we celebrate my FIL birthday on Mother’s Day weekend which sort of puts Mother’s Day in the background. One sibling doesn’t have children and it is a sore spot for her. (Her choice early on but I think now has some regrets) That isn’t happening this year so I get my family to myself for the day.
Mother’s Day/ Father’s Day are not important to us. We’ve given cards over the years but have stopped that as well. (My mother is deceased.)
Not important to me but I have fond memories of making it special for my mother when she was alive and the excitement of my daughters as young kids with their handmade cards and drawings and “gifts”. little ceramic things they made at various birthday parties and so on.
I’m not usually one for holidays and the like, but I fully admit that a couple of years ago, after a very difficult time with my (adult) D, and being there 110%, without judgement, and with a fully open heart for her, it hurt like hell to not even get a phone call saying “Happy Mother’s Day” - so I had it out with her, explaining that I really don’t ask for much from her in the way many parents do, but that I “am” her mother, and while I “know” she loves and cares about me, that something as simple as a phone call to let me know that she also “knows” that she loves and cares about me, is the very least she can do. She cried, I cried, she apologized, I apologized, blah, blah, blah. Within a week I received a handwritten letter from her. It’s a letter I suppose I’d been waiting for for (at the time) 26 years (I’ve been a single mother for her entire life)…in it she let me know how important I am to her, how different her life would be without my care and support, and more…a boat-load more (just retelling this is making me weep). It was a beautiful turning point for her (and for me) and our relationship overall.
Initially I felt like a fool blathering on about “Mother’s Day” but you know what, I don’t any more. And I’m thankful that I was able to (sloppily) express “why” it was important to me.
So now, while I don’t get Hallmark cards, flowers, or taken to brunch (she lives across the country), I do get a phone call, and actually last year she sent me some vintage coffee cups, from a pattern I collect, she stumbled upon while at a flea market. And it makes me feel warm and fuzzy, and appreciated. Yesterday I received a chic cold brew iced coffee carafe and a pound of organic coffee (I exclusively drink iced coffee, and she’s been trying to get me to switch to organic coffee for years now). And I feel appreciated…and more importantly (to me)…she has been paying attention.
All that said, to all the moms out there (and the dads who had to also be moms) - whether you were a parent to a human or a furry child or both (I was lucky to be a parent to both!) I wish a lovely day celebrating YOU! It’s not easy being a parent. Happy Mother’s Day!
(I need to find a tissue)
For various reason s, Mothers Day never went well when my kids were younger. It got to be something I dreaded.
Happily the last few have been good, the kids make an effort to call and send gifts and D calls both grandmothers as well.
I’m in the “don’t need a big fuss” camp, but I do like to have some recognition that it’s Mother’s Day. Bring me a cup of tea in bed and have a nice conversation, or write me a card, or pick me a bouquet of wildflowers and stick them in a vase from the closet. My favorite was when one of my kids surprised me by driving down from college unannounced. I don’t expect H to do anything for me because he has his own mother, but I do appreciate it when he reminds the kids to do something. Mother’s Day is a big deal for my parents so we always have brunch with my extended family and lots of gifts for my mom, and I wouldn’t like not to have an answer when (as invariably happens) someone asks, “What did your kids do for Mother’s Day?”
I bet I’ve gotten fewer than five MD cards from our 20-year-old son over the years, same with my BD. I’ve forgotten my own BD more than once. These holidays and celebrations are totally unimportant to me. However, I do send my own mother a card and give her a call because I know she appreciates it.
Our Mother’s Day plan was pretty much set in stone for many years when the children were both living at home. We have an Inn about a mile from our home with a really beautiful outdoor garden. We always went there for either brunch or a very late lunch depending on the sports schedules of the children. Sometimes my mother would join us and sometimes she would be with one of my siblings. I have great memories of those afternoons.
Now it is pretty much catch as catch can as my D is away at college. She did send me a “One Line a Day” journal where you summarize each day with one sentence–along with a card. My H is back East this week trying to get a property ready to put on the market so my S is taking me to dinner tomorrow evening. I enjoy a little celebration on these sorts of holidays but don’t feel bad if logistics don’t make it possible.
Not a big deal to me. I hope kids will call. (They will.) If I am lucky, one will send cookies.
I did use Father’s Day as a teaching tool, as others have mentioned, in how to make someone else feel special. Kids used to give him breakfast in bed.
Mother’s Day was kind of half-hearted around here for many years until I was diagnosed with leukemia the day after Mother’s Day, and then ten years later, I had my cardiac arrest shortly after MD. Kinda changed our collective perspective a bit!
S2 got tickets for him and me to go to a Nats game Thursday night (rained out, but we’ll go to the rescheduled game in June) and S1 and friend sent me two books on women scientists and rogue princesses. S2, DH and I will go out for dinner tomorrow night. I am blessed.
Well, my S called me TODAY. We had a nice chat. I asked him if this meant he wasn’t calling tomorrow. He said that he might call tomorrow also, although in fact he had gotten confused and though MD was today. I informed him that it was always a Sunday, LOL.