Mother's Day Funk

Today I wasn’t feeling it. I didn’t want to celebrate. I was feeling like I wanted to be left alone and just wanted peace and quiet. I’m not sure why. I don’t know where that feeling originated from. Most people would love to celebrate Mother’s Day with their loved ones. Me, I felt like “ba hum bug”. We were invited to go to lunch with family, but I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to be around the crowds. I didn’t want to have to wait at a restaurant for my lunch to be served to me. I didn’t want to be bothered with all of the people. We also talked about possibly having a gathering at our house last night, but I quickly poo-pooed on that too.  Often our house is the gathering house, but I didn’t want it, not today. I didn’t want to have people over, partly because the house is a mess and what I would consider filthy, partly because it still needs to be unpacked, and partly because I just didn’t want to entertain today.  

I honestly don’t know why I felt that way today, but I did. For the first time in the eight Mother’s Days that I’ve been a mom I wasn’t scheduled to work and I was completely antisocial and really have no regrets about it at all. I did spend awhile talking on FaceTime with my mom and proceeded to spend the rest of the day texting back and forth with my mom, mostly about the new plants that we purchased today at Lowe’s while she told me about her new Mother’s Day toilet from Home Depot. I know, we’re really exciting with our Mother’s Day gifts.

I didn’t feel particularly grumpy. I just didn’t want to celebrate. Maybe because last year the celebration was so exciting and in comparison to this year was kind of depressing. Last year, mid week before Mother’s Day, I was at home working on my writing in the kitchen, when the doorbell rang. It was mid morning and both my kids were at school, while my husband was at work. This was back when I was a server and was home during the day. When I answered the door, I couldn’t believe who was on the other side. It was my mom and D. They had flown to Phoenix, rented a car and shown up at my door, without me having any idea. It was the best surprise I ever had. All I could do was hug them and cry. That ended up being a really nice Mother’s Day.  It was such a wonderful surprise and a great time. The boys got to spend quality time with their grandparents and I got to spend Mother’s Day with my mom, for the second year in a row. So maybe that’s it, I’m feeling irritable because I didn’t get to spend the day with my mom and so I didn’t want to be around other people celebrating the day with their moms.

I also felt bad, because I didn’t even realize it was Mother’s Day until it was too late to send anything to my mom. Luckily my mom and D will be here in about a week. I asked my mom if it was okay if we celebrated Mother’s Day together when she got here, she agreed that would be fine. I’ll have to make up for my not being on top of gifts and cards this school year. It has been such a challenge for me to take care of those type of things. Who am I kidding? Life in general has been chaotic and tough to manage. I haven’t quite found the balance between full time work and family life. 

I think another thing that is weighing heavily on me is that the end of the school year is here. My seniors’ last day of school with me was on Wednesday and Thursday (they had a block schedule and I only saw my classes twice a week). I’m actually sad that it’s over. It surprised me, my feelings about it, I really didn’t think I would get attached to any of them or really care that it was over. But truthfully I’m sad to see them go. I enjoyed having them all as students and treated them as an extension of my own children. I tended to be motherly toward them, because that was what I knew best. There was a part of me that was all excited and looking forward to this end, never once did I think that I would be sad to see them go. I wanted so badly to have some time to myself along with time to finally finish unpacking and move completely in our house, now that we’ve been living here for four months. And now that moment is just around the corner, and I’m sitting here whining about not having my seniors as students anymore. Who’d a thunk it?

All in all this Mother’s Day turned out nice and quiet. My children were elated to share what they picked out as gifts and made as gifts. I got handprints from both of them that they made in their classes. It made me sad to think that their handprints won’t be that small forever. I found myself telling my five year old this morning as I was holding him tight to me, “I only have 13 more years with you and then you will be a grown up.” He thought I was crazy, because he can’t fathom it, but that’s where my mind went. It was a reminder to myself to breath in that particular moment. I love my children with all my heart and cherish what they have helped me to become. I am a work in progress, learning as I go on this motherhood journey. Most recently I am working on staying present in the moment and loving the moment for what it is. Even today when my seven year old was crying so hard, he blew snot out of his nose, dripping off his upper lip in the middle of the Lowe’s nursery, because he didn’t want to shop for plants anymore, I tried to stay present in the moment. As ridiculous as he was behaving, I took a deep breath and talked to him calmly. I explained to him that the longer he behaved like this, the longer we would have to stay at the store, because he was distracting us from the task at hand of searching for new plants. Soon after he stopped and we continued our shopping. While he wasn’t happy about it, eventually he realized that no matter how hard he cried and blew snot out of his nose, we weren’t leaving until I found what I was looking for.

Maybe I am getting the hang of this motherhood thing? I don’t really know. I guess I truly won’t know if I’ve done right by my children until they become healthy and happy adults. Until next time… Happy Mother’s Day.