One Way of Looking at Mothers Day

A holiday that celebrates what we wish we were or doubt we are can be a tricky time. Maybe we would do well to accept Mothers' Day (and ourselves as the objects of it) as we accept what children make in public or Sunday school--the ready made light verse/hand prints/faint random color marks/emerging visual artist or poet/sweet imperfect art presented with elation and brightness of hope. The dread pedestal of Mother of the Year is mockably out of reach if thought of, and not on most mother's minds, at all ("oh who would ever want to be queen"). But every mother can be the mom (don't you love the plainness of that title, and that it's palindrome holding in it an aspiration to be the same person forward and backward, when viewed from the public or private face?). And every mother can be the mom of the moment being with what she is, children or childless, children absent or present, in the moment and desiring, if not performing, to make herself fully present to the other, especially the others she calls her children.