May

15

Mother’s Day

The official Mother’s Day photo:

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and the follow-up, just-for-the-fuck-of-it photo:
Screen shot 2012-05-15 at 8.49.26 PM
It smiles on command or it gets the Mini-14.

I don’t love Mother’s Day, do you? God, the pressure. Social media, in particular, has shaped this so-called holiday into a sort of competition. You can say it doesn’t exist, but it’s there. Who got the most thoughtful gift? Who has the most beautiful photos?

I’m not exempt at all, in fact, I use Mother’s Day as the one date per year when I absolutely demand a photo of me and the boys. It always, always turns to shit—grumpy expressions, increasingly irritated demands—and what the hell, self. If Mother’s Day should be about anything, it surely shouldn’t involve me blow-drying my hair and barking at my kids.

It seems a little bogus, this idea of forcing loved ones to momentarily stop taking for granted all the mothering mothery things we do, and to be honest, I don’t want picture-perfect gifts or bed-breakfasts. If anything, I’d love a hotel room to myself, with a pile of shitty magazines and 11 PM room service.

We’re not supposed to want that, of course. How awful would that be, to ask that our one gift be this: to shed, briefly, the confines of motherhood? To utterly abandon the expectations of living a perfect family life and dive wholeheartedly in the direction of pure selfishness?

(Ahhhhh, but still.)

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May

14

One nation, divisible

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