No, I’m not talking about bowling. I’m talking about the fairness of Mother’s Day. If you’re the last mom in line, you had better forget it. Brunch in bed if you are lucky, a piece of jewelry and some flowers, perhaps, but then the rest of the day is spent catering to the other mothers in your life. Your mom, his mom, his step-mom, Aunts, siblings who are moms… Good grief. A trip to the card store recently was enough to make my head spin.
Why can’t we come up with some different ideas for Mother’s Day that would honor all moms equally? Perhaps a First/Second/Third Generation Mother’s Day, a Step-Mother’s Day, a My Sister is a Great Mother Mother’s Day… In this fashion no mother is left feeling second best.
Better still was an idea I had a few years back equalizing Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in that it would be expected that the mothers would be gone all day. Come on – you know it is expected that fathers get the entire day off to play golf or something. Truly Mother’s Day should be called “Mother’s Hour” as we all know we get about an hour or two to pound a mimosa over brunch, then it’s back to the reality of dishes, laundry, and house-hold drudgery.
There are a few non-designated Sundays left on the calendar, so why not start designating them for all the versions of motherhood Hallmark acknowledges? It would certainly be a welcomed break for this mom to not have to fret about which mom is being left out. The truth is the mom who gets forgotten most often is me.
So Hallmark and 1-800-FLOWERS, you should be thanking THIS mom; you can increase your sales five-fold if you play your marketing cards a little better!
Anthonette “Colonel” Klinkerman is author of Courtesy Bootcamp and Battle of the Grandmas– both available on Amazon.
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