Mother’s Day Ambivalence, The Nineteenth Week of the Second Year in the New Abnormal

I, like many, have mixed feelings about Mother’s Day.

As a daughter I knew that I loved my mom, and I also yearned for her acceptance, spending far too much of my babysitting money to bask in the momentary approval of an expensive Mother’s Day gift. I’d set up Arlene’s Kitchen, honoring our mom. It was a made-up restaurant in our home with hand-written menus for the family. Nervous about what I might cook, I’d prep all the possibilities from eggs, any type of French toast or bagels & lox. As down home as those brunches were, they were followed by the certainty that my clean-up techniques would be met with inevitable disapproval. No one could make a countertop shine like my mom.

Then when I became an older mother to a young child I wanted recognition. Even as I doubted my own parenting skills, I wanted my family to tell me I was great. Not that it would have landed with accepting ears, but my insecurities yearned for others to tell me I was up…