My Favorite Thing About Mother's Day

I think my favorite thing about Mother's Day is how many hits I get on my Mother's Day card posts like this one from people using benign and non-snarky search terms like "mother's day card from daughter." 

And don't forget this one, which doesn't come up in Mother's Day searches but I think would make a fantastic card cover if you want to express your own sentiments inside: 

Feel free to print your own.  If someone asks where you got it, I simply ask that you credit "some bitch on the internet."  Happy Mother's Day, Everybody!

Homemade Gifts

When I was little, I used to make my family members gifts for holidays and their birthdays.  I think this is pretty typical for small children with zero income.  The stress that came from giving my mother gifts started when I was too young to remember.  If I drew a picture, she tended to mention how much better at drawing Dante had been than me even as a small child.  When I stopped drawing pictures and took to just coloring straight lines and shapes in the hopes of avoiding criticism, she told me my drawings were boring and that no one wanted to look at brightly colored lines.  Again, she would point to Dante's drawings (literally) as an example of what was good.  I could copy what he'd drawn at my age easily enough -- such things were still on my grandmother's refrigerator seven years later (hence the literal pointing) -- but doing anything Dante had done first was considered boring too. 

In school around the holidays, we often made things like "pencil holders" by decorating old tin cans, which I would eagerly offer up and my mother would accept with the sarcastic reply, "Great.  Another pencil can."  (It's not like she had more than she could use either.  Do you have any idea how many pencils you can find in a hoard house?  They are infinite.) 

When I learned to sew in elementary school and took to sewing and embroidering small throw pillows because it was all I knew how to make from the tiny scraps of fabric I could get my hands on, they prompted a disparaging snort and the similar response, "Great.  Another pillow."  That was around the time I started saving up all my birthday and Christmas money to buy proper gifts for my family.  I knew only babies made homemade gifts and that no one liked them anyway.  That point was very clear at my house.  That was the year my mother ridiculed me for buying her gifts at the Dollar Store.  It was around the same time Dante started stealing from me.  Childhood is the worst.

Mother's Day Card 2015

I suppose it's true that practically everything I am is at least a byproduct of her and her words and actions.  While I think this card would infuriate her, I mean it as a compliment.  I think it's one of the best qualities I have.

Why I Stopped Giving My Mother Gifts

I have known for as long as I can remember that I am terrible at picking out gifts for my mother.  She does not like to ask for things in particular because she wants her gifts to be a surprise, but she also wants them to be exactly what she wants.  She says that it is the thought that counts; therefore if we'd put enough thought into our gifts, we would have been able to pick out the right ones.

When I was in my early 20s she said she wanted a foot massager that could do pressure point foot massages.  The closest thing I could find in person or online at the time was a massaging foot bath from Brookstone, so I bought it.  The moment she unwrapped it she said it was wrong, not what she wanted at all, and that I should return it immediately and give her a Walmart gift card instead because keeping the foot bath would just be a waste of my money.  I had asked her all through college for gift cards for birthdays and Christmas because I did not have enough money for new clothes, but she had always told me she couldn't afford to give me gift cards.  Instead she'd sent me large boxes of toys and other useless sundries, like a keychain with a babydoll on the end and a plastic circle for pressing the water out of canned tuna.  Each box must've totaled $50-100, possibly more after shipping.  So I returned the foot bath and got my money back, and I kept it. 

The next year I just sent her flowers and a card.  She had ordered flowers for me for every birthday since I turned a year old, plus Valentine's Day and other holidays.  She said the flowers arrived in a box and not already arranged in a vase.  Ordering flowers online was a new phenomenon, and I'd unwittingly sent her flowers that she had to arrange after they arrived.  She didn't even know people did that.  The next year she told me not to send her some stupid waste of money like flowers -- she wanted gift cards, so I should just send her gift cards.  I just sent her a card.  I sent her just a card for every holiday until she had ignored a couple of my birthdays and Christmases, and then I stopped.

Mother's Day Gifts

When I was eight, I was delighted to discover The Dollar Store because it was finally somewhere where I could afford the merchandise with birthday money.  My mother had a collection of ceramic knickknacks in a glass curio cabinet, so I used the money I had saved up to buy her a Mother's Day gift of a few Dollar Store ceramic knickknacks I thought were particularly beautiful.  I was very proud of my selections and felt like such a grownup for being able to buy a proper Mother's Day gift.

I did not know the white bell with doves on top was meant to be a wedding knickknack until my mother told me so.  I was so ashamed.  I'd had no idea.  Since when were birds and bells reserved for weddings?  My mother had a non-wedding-related bell in the curio cabinet already.  Then she picked up the phone and called her own mother and said, "Guess who discovered The Dollar Store," and went on to disparage my choice of store and gifts to my grandmother while I stood there looking on.

Yet Another Mother's Day Card

Another Mother's Day Card

A Mother's Day Card

I started noticing a few years ago that Hallmark does not make Mother's Day cards that express my sentiments.  So I started making my own.  Here is one I made last year.