Friends Old, New, and Soon to Be,
I am not much for greeting card holidays. I like sincerity too much for the saccharine of holidays manufactured to sell cards, candy, and Mylar balloons, those last banned in our house after finding countless faded holiday messages tangled deep in the woods or floating offshore.
Most of those days ring hollow to me anyway. I’ve lived in countries where most people were unaware of when exactly their birthday might be, and the older I get, the less I need a celebration of mine. I find perfection in a Father’s Day spent in stoic silence with nothing more than a hug from my wife and daughter, a good book, and a good steak thereafter. But then comes Mother’s Day, to my mind, the only unquestionably valid holiday in the greeting card pantheon.
On Mother’s Day, a card, candy, and flowers may be the standard, but I defy anyone to properly thank a mother with them, or anything else. I am deeply convicted of my importance as a father, but something changes when a woman assumes responsibility for a child. Perhaps it’s physiological; watch a mother deer fight off a coyote, and you’ll believe it. Perhaps it’s psychological, some connection between mother and offspring. Certainly, some of it must be the unspoken expectation we have for moms, that in the name of familial welfare, they yield so many parts of themselves that fathers are generally afforded the option to keep. Whether nature or nurture, there’s something about mothers that goes beyond science or spirit, to a place all its own.
I’ve said of my mother, “She does not open her eyes in the morning before she has tried to figure out what she can do for someone else.” My life is the proof. Growing up, I watched her make sacrifice after sacrifice, working hours that would put today’s life hackers to shame, to ensure I had everything I needed and everything she wanted me to have. Mom was often working when I went to bed and always up when I rose to eat the breakfast she made for me. She dropped me off at school with the lunches she had made because I didn’t like cafeteria food, then headed to her office to ensure three male attorneys knew their direct examinations from their objections. In the solipsism of youth, I assumed all was as it should be. It wasn’t, but it was how it still is, and this missive does not bring me any closer to repaying that inestimable debt than cards, candy, and flowers.
In awe and appreciation, as well as embarrassment, I acknowledge that moms are the default gatherers of familial slack, keeping a family moving in one direction. As I write this, I hear my wife inquiring whether the daughter I left to graze this morning needs breakfast. Tomorrow she’ll drop our daughter off at school and head to her office. I’ll stay home and attempt to wax poetic about quail.
I said something changes when a woman assumes responsibility for a child. It’s an assertion borne out by the existence of volunteer moms, women who feel compelled to see a child not their own cared for. My stepmother was an educator by trade. While mothering her son, my brother, to an admirable adulthood, she also watched for the kids who needed something they could not find at home. Sometimes they came home with her for a while. Maybe only then did they know the fullness of what it means to have a mom. Throughout all of that and my serpentine pattern of professions, she remained adamant that I needed to be a writer, something I ignored until it became a career that makes me deeply happy. Moms just know.
We can’t hope to pay them back, and that’s not the point. Mothers do what they do because they are mothers, a status somehow natural and prosaic yet exquisite and unique. So buy the cards and candy. Maybe skip the Mylar balloons. Cook them breakfast in bed or take them somewhere they want to go, whatever makes them happiest in the moment. Likely, it’s your presence. Acknowledge a debt that cannot be repaid. Most of all, say thank you to the mothers of all varieties who give all of themselves to all of us, the people they love.
Yours,
Russell Worth Parker
Editor-in-Chief, Tom Beckbe Field Journal
