🌺Have a happy Mother's Day🌸

Or just a Mother's Day

One aspect of my day job is copyediting and in honor of Mother’s Day, I took a stab at correcting some old chestnuts about new parenthood:

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Optimal Conditions, by Christy Drackett

I feel sorry for my husband on Mother’s Day. I’m never sure how to articulate exactly what I want, but if I could it would probably sound something like this: “Get me flowers. Have the kids draw me cards that they worked on with you yesterday, and wake me with breakfast in bed. Present me with symbolic jewelry. Take the children away for the day. Do something outside with them, and leave me alone. Do not under any circumstances have an allergy attack. Please become a person who is decisive, valiant and energetic, like the energizer bunny of white knights. Stay actively engaged with the children all day and remember to feed them. Miraculously evolve into someone who understands and excels at time management. Make sure dinner is on its way to us by 5 PM, and please know exactly what I want to eat without asking. Just… become perfect, make the children perfect, and obviously give me the goddam day off.”

There are many reasons I married Chris thirteen years ago, not the least of which is because I knew he’d make a better parent than me. His level of patience is inhuman. However, with this comes a sort of… casual acceptance of the way things are even when they’re not great, and I cannot relate to this. I am perpetually perturbed. Even when the kids are melting down and everything is so obviously terrible, if you asked him at that moment how things are going, he’d say: “Fine.” He is likewise immune to pressure and cares not a lick what our society expects a man to do. He has never been in a fistfight. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t give a shit about sports, he cries when he is sad, and he hardly ever gets angry. His quiet, gentle, easygoing nature is probably what causes him to freeze in the face of perceived high expectations — especially mine because as he recently admitted, he is “slightly afraid” of me. (!!!!!) Thus, he simply cannot function in an enhanced capacity on the Mother-of-All-Expectation-Laden Holidays: God Damned Mother’s Day. 

Mother’s Day is also difficult for both of us for reasons like the following: I know a person whose spouse ordered a gourmet meal from her favorite restaurant weeks ago to be delivered today, to surprise her for dinner. On Mother’s Day. Like, how does this even happen? I just have no concept of how in this universe my partner would just think to do something like this. Did this woman tell her spouse point-blank: “Do exactly this,” spelling it out so she could post about it on social media? Because for it to happen in my life, that’s what I’d have to do. Which kind of defeats the purpose.

My friends Melissa, Betsy, and I had been lamenting about these first-world problems in preparation for this year’s social media brag-fest /spectacle of commercialization. I remain haunted by memories of two years ago, let’s just call it “MD 2018” when all I wanted for Mother’s Day was to go to the Warby Parker store and get new eyeglasses fitted to my face. Chris took the girls to another part of the mall and by the time I was done at Warby and reunited with them, both of my children’s faces were covered in chocolate fro-yo and they were each clutching a brand new stuffed animal from the toy store and whining about how bored they were. When they both eventually collapsed into full-on meltdown inside a Chipotle restaurant, I stomped away from them in a huff. As some of us climbed willfully into the car and others were forcefully shoved, I screamed at the members of my family: “ALL OF YOU RUINED MOTHER’S DAY. I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY!” It was not my most shining moment. It was, however, the truth. Every day of my life is mostly about these other people. And why, I suddenly realized, should I expect it to be any different today? These expectations set everyone up to fail. My friends with young kids all have similar stories.

Based on these mutual feelings of letdown, Melissa, Betsy, and I decided to take matters into our own hands for the Coronavirus Mother’s Day Fuck-all Hellscape 2020 (CMDFAH). “Ladies? We will have our day,” I said. “We will Door Dash each other some awesome shit. We will lock ourselves in our bedrooms alone. And then… we will Netflix Party.” 

Melissa and Betsy live in Chicago, my old home. I miss them, and occasionally also my life before I was traumatized by motherhood. From me, Melissa and Betsy each received a dozen donuts from their respective neighborhood bakeries along with two bottles of champagne, a latte, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. At my house in Kirkland, Washington, I received a beautiful bouquet of lilies and hydrangeas, a carton of strawberry merlot sorbet, a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, a piece of cheesecake with whipped cream and a cherry on top, and a ceramic mug featuring Rosie the Riveter saying: “Mother of the Fucking Year : Pandemic Warrior.” When my deliveries arrived, my husband was dumbfounded.

Him: “Who sent the flowers?”

Me: “Melissa!”

Him: “What if I wanted to give you flowers? What if I wanted to do something   nice for you?

Me: “You’re always welcome to.” 

Him: …

Me:  Smiles. “Pressure’s off. We have taken matters into our own hands.”

Melissa, Betsy, our friend Molly and I all watched “Never Have I Ever” together via Netflix Party and laughed our tipsy asses off in the middle of the day. It was the best. Afterwards, I reluctantly re-entered the crumbling world outside my bedroom door.

As I expected, my children’s behavior had devolved into meltdown, probably because of too much goddam Minecraft and not enough food.

“I *gasp* caaannnn’t *gasp* mooooove!” Eloise yelled, red-faced, throwing herself onto the floor after she was gently asked to participate in picking up the mess she made in the playroom. I feel like the fact that she was naked is also relevant here, as it accurately conveys the level of feral-ness reached by the end of this “day”. Per her report, the clothes I dressed her in that morning were somewhere out in the yard, but I can’t be too sure.

“There’s a red spot on my leeegggggg!” my other daughter Hazel screamed, adding, “and I’m So. Scared! Can’t! Mooooooove!” I am immune to her over-dramatization about anything pertaining to 1) her body, or 2) her “fear,” as it happens regularly and is never *actually* a big deal. I continued washing the dishes, nonplussed, and occasionally saying something like, “Oh man, that’s too bad!” or, “Bummer!”

Inside, I was thinking: Would it really be Mother’s Day without my children displaying the worst, most obnoxious behavior of the year? As if reading my thoughts, Chris said, “Why don’t you go do yoga or something? I’ll put the kids to bed.” 

Once everyone disappeared, I vacuumed the living room. Fifteen minutes later, Chris came up to find me. “Eloise is really missing you. She wants you to read her a book.” I sighed and went back downstairs to Eloise’s room. Snuggle, read, kiss, sing. Then I went into Hazel’s room and kissed her goodnight, too. She was sitting up in her bed, pulling up a sleepcast via the Headspace app on her iPad. “Sleep tight, honey,” I said. 

“You too, Mommy,” she said with sincerity, kissing me. Her sensitivity works both ways. Sometimes, I am the blessed recipient.

Upstairs, Chris said: “I’m sorry you had a bad Mother’s Day,” and came in for a hug wearing his puppy-dog face. 

“I didn’t have a bad Mother’s Day,” I said. “Thank you for playing with the kids so I could watch a show with my friends for two hours.” 

“I tried to get them to make you things yesterday, but they just… weren’t into it. I didn’t want to force it. I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing my back. His eyes looked tentative; remorseful and somewhat pleading.

“I get it,” I said. “Its okay. I love you,” and I felt him start to breathe deeper. I kissed his cheek and buried my nose in his neck for a second, which he tolerated.

I can’t control when my kids lose their minds and are struck with spontaneous immobility, but I can try my damndest to stay grounded and calm so they can ride that wave until it reaches the shore. I can’t control how my husband responds to the stress of trumped-up expectations, but I can love him for who he is and appreciate all that he can and does do. I can’t control how my friends’ kids or spouses choose to commemorate this day for them, but I can send them donuts and alcohol. I can’t control my frustration with the impossible expectations of Mother’s Day, but I can shut my bedroom door, open Netflix Party, connect with beloved friends, eat cheesecake, drink vodka from a mug that says “fuck,” and create my own goddam optimal conditions for growth. 

Christy is a visual artist and occasional nonfiction writer living just outside Seattle with her husband, two daughters, two dogs, two cats, and seven chickens. Having been born and raised in Cincinnati, she considers the Pacific Northwest Shangri-la. (Living in Chicago in her 20’s wasn’t half bad, either.) She enjoys reading, knitting, painting, hiking, skiing, eating, and paying someone else to scoop the dog poop out of her yard.

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End credits

I hope you enjoyed this guest issue of Evil Witches, a newsletter for people who happen to be mothers. I hope you all have the Mother’s Day you really want or at least a fragment of one. Let me know in the comments any aspect of a great Mother’s Day you once had, heard of, or dream about. Here are the last two E.W. Mother’s Day posts if you’re feeling nostalgic.

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One witchy thing

A throwback to a Mother’s Day of yore, re: things we don’t really miss about the beforetimes: