Mother's Day, Whatever...

I am not a big holiday person.  The Buddhists don't have many holidays, and the Chinese mostly have agricultural-based holidays (planting, harvest, winter solstice festivals) which were (obviously) not on the calendar I knew as a child growing up in the US.  So I grew up in a largely holiday-free zone.

As an adult, my nonchalance towards holidays has served me well.  I feel no guilt (and my mother foists no guilt upon me) if I can't make it home for Christmas or New Years or the 4th of July.  I rarely gift or am gifted by my immediate family.  As a family, we have even extended our holiday-free mentality to cover birthdays.  A birthday is considered feted if it involves a mylar balloon and a cupcake.

But clearly, as I've become a mother, things have changed.  Partly because holidays are an important part of my husband's life.  His family goes absolutely defcon one over holiday logistics.  They exercise an excruciating calculus of "how much time does each (grown) son spend with each divorced parent" with a holiday weighted point system (with Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, and each parent's birthday getting extremely high points, obviously).  And partly because even heathen I believe in the sanctity of the child's belief in holiday magic.

But mother's day is doubly strange to me.  It's a holiday for (presumedly) me, so there is no holiday magic to be preserved for my daughters (outside of the requisite mother's day homemade gift, which Loo did this year for the first time in pre-K, and which was adorable).  And I seriously don't care.  So for the time being, J and I have turned mother's day more into grandmother's day, and we took our mothers out (jointly) this weekend for a "fancy" meal, and so that they could spend some time with their granddaughters.

But there was no breakfast in bed, no flowers and gifts, no night out for me.

Though I did mention to J that my ideal (this year) would have been the freedom to go watch the new Star Trek movie.  Two guesses whether my wish got fulfilled or not.

Nonlinear girl took this series of mother's day questions from the Motherlode blog.  They intrigued me (from an archivist POV) so I thought I would indulge on this not-so-busy Monday-after-Mother's Day.  As Nonlinear Girl did, I am answering these as I might to my daughters (or to my own mother).  I've also deleted some for lack of present relevance.

1.    What’s the one thing you would have done differently as a mom?
I'm sure this will be a more important question once I have more years under my belt.  But I wish I had spend more of my young adulthood preparing (economically) for my family so that I wouldn't feel the same kind of tension right now between providing for them economically and providing for them emotionally/spiritually/ mentally.

2.    Why did you choose to be with my father?
This is pretty easy.  J is the smartest man who has ever been interested in me.  I'm a sucker for a nerd.

3.    In what ways do you think I’m like you?
Loo is unfocused and lazy, which is also my default personality.  My ability to succeed has been entirely a function of my ambition.  Strip away the ambition, there is nothing I love more than a warm TV and a basket full of brownies.  Kali is aggressive, which I think is the toddler expression of ambition.  So Loo and Kali are the Yin and Yang of my personality.

4.    Which one of us kids did you like the best?
As Metrodad has said, whichever one isn't pissing me off at any given moment.

5.    Is there anything you regret not having asked your parents?
My mom and I have have a very weird, and yet very typical Chinese mother-daughter relationship.  She has been a very pure source of steadfast guidance and support my entire life.  She has been a fount of good advice about the most difficult situations.  But she's also devastatingly critical.  I've never felt that I've been able to do even one thing right by her standards, which then means that we've never been able to share things beyond a fairly superficial level. 

6.    Is there anything that you wish had been different between us — or that you would still like to change?
I want desperately to stop equating status with a good life.  I think I do this a lot.  And status is not just money, but also intelligence, education, and even liberalism.  And mostly I want to figure out a way so that my daughters can distinguish between the desire for status and what it takes to have a good life.  I think right now, I'm imparting too much of my desire for status onto my daughters.

7.    When did you realize you were no longer a child?
For me, this had nothing to do w/ being a mother.  I knew I  wasn't a child when I stopped being a drama queen.  Which probably happened at around 28/29.  I stopped acting like a petulant child whenever things didn't go my way, and I stopped thinking that the world owed me anything.  Interestingly, I would also say that this was the moment I turned into my mom.

For all you mother's out there who do take Mother's Day seriously, I hope you had a very lovely Mother's Day and that you were all able to fully bask in the love of your children.

Comments

[nonlineargirl]

Thanks for tackling this - I am interested in how people answer these questions. They were harder for me than I thought they would be.

A good friend with a one year old was surprised how much the marking of mother's day meant to her. I think that especially that first year it is nice to have a "hey, I did this hard thing and survived" celebration, and since her kid was born 3 weeks before mother's day last year, this year really is a landmark. It has me thinking about the fact that parenting does not come with the usual rewards/awards we are used to as women with fulfilling jobs. There is no master's degree, no raise, no accolade for the daily work of parenting.