How Did Your Mother’s Day Without Children Go?

Mother’s Day is over, hallelujah. How did you do?

One reader told me she had a nice get-away day and was able to ignore the mom’s day hysteria. Another attended a family gathering. When her godchild wished her a happy Mother’s Day, her niece corrected her with “She’s not a mother.” Ugh. One of the guests handed a rose to every woman in honor of her motherhood. Awkward.

Mother’s Day is tough, and not just for those of us who are childless. People whose mothers have died or who have difficult relationships with their mothers struggle through the day. People who don’t get along with their children, whose children have died, or whose stepchildren fail to recognize them as mothers all have a hard time with Mother’s Day.

I don’t think anybody has the kind of Mother’s Day we see in the TV commercials. First, the mothers are pictured as gorgeous young women. Whose mom looks like that? Second, the family drops everything to honor her. Third, they buy her gifts that cost hundreds of dollars, like jewelry and iPads. It was never like that in my family.

I did pretty well on the actual holiday this year, although I had a meltdown the night before. A friend had been complaining that her children didn’t honor her properly, so she hated Mother’s Day. She wanted me to comfort her by taking her to brunch. No freaking way. Then she posted a picture on Facebook of the gorgeous roses her husband bought her. Hello? No kids, dead mother AND no husband over here. Yes, I was a weepy mess.

I played piano at the Saturday evening Mass. Our pastor really tried to be inclusive, offering his blessing to “all women who serve the role of mothers.” He didn’t pass out flowers to the mothers or make them stand while those of us without kids sat in shame, but it was still painful.

I stayed too long on Facebook. After the third friend in a row posted pictures of her Mother’s Day flowers, I got offline and stayed off until Monday. I didn’t miss anything except endless Mother’s Day posts.

On Sunday, I stayed home from church and piddled around the house until time to join friends for a music jam. We had a small group. Some were absent because of Mother’s Day, but that gave the rest of us more chances to sing and play. We had guitars, fiddles, a mandolin, harmonicas and three great female voices to harmonize. It was so much fun I forgot to feel bad.

Afterward, I watched a rerun of the movie “The Bucket List.” Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. So good.

That’s how I survived. How about you? What will you do differently next year?

We Made It Through Another Mother's Day!

We survived Mother’s Day. Congratulations to all of us. I was all set to cruise through this one by keeping busy and not thinking about it. But I don’t live in the desert or alone on an island, and neither do you. All the prayers for moms at church, the moms being taken out to brunch by their loving families, the Facebook posts, the TV shows, and the friends talking about visiting their mothers and bragging about what their children had done for them took their toll. I didn’t weep. I wished a few friends happy Mother’s Day, and I had a good time playing music with friends in the afternoon, but by bedtime, I felt profoundly sad. I missed my mother, my husband, my stepchildren and the biological children I never had. I lay awake in bed, watching the digital clock tick through the numbers until midnight, then breathed a sigh of relief. Mother’s Day was over. Thank God.

I don’t think other people understand how we feel, especially on days like Mother’s Day or at baby showers or when our friends obsess about their children. It’s like we come from another country and speak another language. The thing to try to remember is that there’s nothing wrong with our country and our language. They’re different but just as good.Our lives just took a different path.

I need your help with something. In the last week, several people have posted comments about situations where one partner wants children and the other doesn’t, and they’re considering breaking up. They love each other and don’t know if they’ll ever find someone else as good, but the baby issue has come between them. It’s hard to know what to say except I’m sorry and I hope they make the right decision. If you have a minute, visit the post If You Disagree About Children, Is Your Relationship Doomed? and add your two cents.

How did you do on Mother’s Day? Tell us how it went.  

 

Duck! Mother's Day is Coming Again

If we're to believe the images we see in the TV commercials, Mother's Day is a joy to all women. Their children shower them with gifts, Hallmark cards, and breakfast in bed, and the whole family gathers to honor the grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Picture little girls in frilly dresses hugging their moms and grand-moms. Picture big picnics, feasts at a big dining room table, or gatherings at a favorite restaurant. Picture flowers and cards, and the whole world wishing you a happy Mother's Day because you, the mother, deserve it.

Yeah. Now picture what it's really like for many of us. First, our mothers may be dead or terminally ill or we don't get along. The holiday emphasizes the fact that we don't have a mother to honor. Second, we don't all have children. We go to church and feel left out when special prayers are said for the mothers. We go out to eat, and the waiter assumes we're mothers, but we're not. We go to a family gathering and feel left out because we're the only ones without kids. We wait all day for some kind of acknowledgement from our stepchildren, and it doesn't happen. Everywhere we look, people are talking about Mother's Day, and it makes us feel like crap.

For those who are mothers, congratulations. Enjoy your day. For the rest of us, if we can focus on the moms in our lives, that's a great thing to do. If you just can't, run away until it's over. It's a good day to turn off the TV, stay away from Facebook, and avoid going to restaurants. How about a hike, a walk on the beach, or a movie instead?

I'll be playing music for two Masses at church and then going to my monthly song circle. In between, I'll probably have lunch with a friend who hates Mother's Day as much as I do. Her mother, like mine, has died. She has adult children, but their relationship is rocky. So I'll pretty much do what I usually do on Sundays, and I'll enjoy it.

Over the years, Mother's Day has gotten easier for me. It will for you, too, I promise. Try not to get yourself all upset about it. If you need a good cry, go ahead and cry. Then move on. It's just one day.

Duck and cover, it's Mother's Day

Dear friends,
Here we are again, Mother's Day. I'm hiding out. After all these years, I still teared up at church when Father Brian gave the annual Mother's Day blessing. After I complained at the liturgy meeting, he altered it include all women who nurture or care for others. But I still got misty.

If this is a tough day for you, you might want to take a peek at my "Childless Woman's Survival Guide" at the Exhale online zine. If that doesn't do it, visit suelick.com, click on Childless and read my "Mother's Day Rant."

If you're still miserable, turn off all media and do something physical, like gardening, washing the car or baking cookies (which you will then eat). Put on some loud music and forget the whole Mother's Day business. It'll be over soon.

Share childless feelings in Exhale zine

My Google alerts brought me to an interesting zine called "Exhale," which is subtitled "A literary magazine for intelligent people who have lost a baby, or can't figure out how to make one in the first place." You can get it in print or online. My friend Tiffany Lee Brown won an award from Exhale for her piece "The Kitchen Sink." It's available online and definitely worth a read.
Bravo, Tiffany.

I also discovered an interesting article called "The Men Who are Desperate for Kids," published April 19 in the UK's TimesOnline. So often, we only look at the woman's viewpoint, but men have strong feelings about childlessness, too. They may not show it, for fearing of appearing "soft," but writer Nirpal Dhaiwal tells how men who wanted children and don't have them can feel the loss just as much as woman can.

As all the advertising media won't let us forget, Sunday is Mother's Day. I'm planning to duck and cover till it's over. Someone already wished me a happy Mother's Day yesterday. I just said "thank you" and moved on. I didn't have the energy to set them straight.

Happy whatever, my friends.

Running Free

Following up on yesterday's post, I've noticed something interesting. Today, with my father and brother gone back home, I'm feeling amazingly freer and younger than I did when they were here. I danced to regae music last night, I had cake for lunch today, and just now I was outside running with the dogs. It felt good. Not having anyone to please or to care for can be awfully lonely, but it is also freeing. You become ageless, not pigeonholed into the role of daughter, mother, grandmother, or wife, just yourself, running in the unmowed grass, the breeze blowing your hair around and making the wind chimes sing.

There's a lot one can regret about not having children. God knows I have shed an ocean of tears, but there are advantages, too. As the Mother's Day ads threaten to drown us in our childlessness, try to remember the good parts. If there's a mother in your life, celebrate her. If not, just tune out the ads and go run with the dogs.

Mother's Day again

How many of us want to hide under the covers until this Hallmark holiday is over? I have no children of my own and my mother and mother-in-law are dead, yet people automatically wish me a happy Mother's Day. I got tired of correcting them long ago.

This morning at church, a friend started to wish a parishioner Happy Mothers Day, then stopped herself. "I'm sorry. You don't have kids," she said. I was aghast. Once you've started, you don't take it back that way, like sorry, you don't qualify.

Anyway, with the music director out sick, I led the choirs and played the piano through three Masses. Three times I stood up as Father Brian went through his Mother's Day spiel. Actually, it wasn't bad. He included not only birth mothers but foster mothers, caregivers, and any woman who nurtures somebody. Moms were supposed to bow their heads for a blessing. The first Mass I refused to lower my head, but this morning, after particularly difficult night caring for the pups and the husband and being reminded that I have had three stepchildren for 23 years, I bowed. I accepted the blessings and prayers. I need them.

It's about 2:00 our time, and I haven't heard a word from the stepchildren, not even an e-card. But the puppies love me.

I hate this holiday. After Mass, I went to McDonald's, thinking I might get a peaceful lunch there, missing all the Mom's Day brunch crowd. Wrong. There were dozens of little kids with their mothers and balloons and gifts and all that nonsense. Me, I got hit on by a crazy man from our church who decided to sit with me when all I wanted to do was read my magazine and enjoy my sandwich.

Ten more hours to midnight PDT. Then we'll be safe for another year.

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