So for a couple of weeks, every business I have ever bought, sold, made inquiry, complained to, what have you, has sent me an ad explaining why some form of their good or service would make the PERFECT mother’s day gift.
I’ve been ignoring them.
Just now, I got a deluge of ads, many from various subscription services, that want me to give my mother the gift of Netflix, Acorn, Doordash, or Grubhub. Most are at least not making pretensions about the mass email, but a few are trying to pretend that they are personal offers just for me. Well, there’s no fooling me, and my mother has been dead since Aug of 2017. In fact, when she went into hospice, she cancelled a lot of things herself "Why pay? mother opined, when the hospice subscribed. My stepfather cancelled most of the rest.
Do they really pick up so much business this way, that it’s worth the people they may alienate?
Don’t want to spoil M’sD for you (I want to spoil it for everyone) so I’ll just mention that in Germany (link to wikipedia) the idea of M’sD was imported from the USA in 1923 but was soon used and abused by the nazis to promote a racist idea of motherhood as a source of soldiers. Arian soldiers. Pure eugenics and militarism. And today? Commerce of the cheapest kind. So if you don’t like the idea your instincts are right.
After decades trying to make a relationship with my mother work, I went no contact with her and I’m honestly not sure if she’s alive or not because everyone in my family has blocked her.
I used to just ignore this day completely, as I do Father’s Day, which is even worse.
But now I’m a mother so it has taken on a different color for me. Incidentally one of my worst days as a mother happened at a Mother’s Day brunch last year, where my son was melting down due to sensory overload and my husband’s uncle stage whispered: “It’s because he’s so poorly socialized” while I was right there at the table. That was during our year of hell trying to get our son services and I truly wanted to launch myself across the table and punch him in the face.
But I’ve come to a point where I don’t care any more. You get over it.
Today we are chill at home. I don’t require much other than time with my son. And a smoothie. I got a smoothie.
My mother worked for directory assistance for several decades and Mother’s Day was supposedly the busiest day of the year for that service. (FYI, directory assistance is, or was, the service that provided telephone numbers.) It seemed to me that you really only need to make one call that day, and if you don’t already know her number. . . .
Nothing worse than delivering flowers to women in nursing homes on a Sunday morning.
It’s a tough time of day for the home, the caretakers and the inmates. You gotta start early to get the deliveries done before night time.
I worked in a flower shop for a brief time in college. I went to learn flower arrangement for credit. I ended up sweeping, dying carnations, delivering to hospitals, nursing homes and funeral parlors. Yep, pinned corsages on dead bodies, many times. Creepy!
It’s been nearly forty years since my mother died and I still don’t like being reminded of Mother’s Day by floods of businesses trying to see me gifts for her.
Unfortunately I can’t remember offhand who it was, but about a month ago I got an email from some company asking me if I wanted to opt out of being included in Mother’s Day offers. This was the first time it’s ever happened.
My mom died 7 or so years ago. On the following Mother’s Day I was talking with my gf’s mom and asked her if it would be okay if I treated her like my mom for the holiday. She loved the idea.
Ever since then, on my birthday I get a “to a wonderful son” card. One of my gf’s brothers always kids me about how “mom has always liked you best”.
There are a lot of painfully unimaginative people who are boringly traditionalist when it comes to these kinds of “made up to sell shit” commemorative days. It’s a bit sad, in some ways.
I always wish my Mother a happy day, but none of us have exchanged gifts for anything in many decades.