The Graduate v. The Mother

All right, folks. It's time we talk about appropriate Mothers' Day gifts.

Before you all go, "Uh-oh, George. What'd you DO?!" I would like to say it here that he knocked it out of the park. He did it exactly right and should teach classes on this matter. We will speak more of it later.

But. To all of you out there who give your moms diet books and cleaning supplies, let's have a chat.

Today, my husband got himself and the kids up early, went to the grocery store and bought sausage, eggs, and crescent rolls, and came home and made breakfast together. They brought it upstairs to me, pleased as punch, and armed with their little crafts that Daddy coached them through (oh, and by the way, he also made a paper-plate flower himself). Husbands? Children? This is how you do it.

But we had to leave our social time at church and I have to spend the rest of this day parenting, cleaning, and making dinner by myself because an entire institution thought it would be the best Mothers' Day present for mothers to see their sons walk at graduation.

Now we first must ask ourselves: is that really a good gift? I hear it all the time--what better gift could we give these mothers than giving them the gift of witnessing the culmination of their children's studies, and honor them for their accomplishments?

I am a mother. I have a mother. And I have lots of friends who are mothers. And I can tell you that all of us would say that we spend our days running our families. We make sure everyone has clothes on their backs, food in their tummies, praise for their latest art project, and appropriate guidance when they have questions and make wrong decisions. We spend hours thinking about what's best for our children. What the right thing to say is, and how we must say it. We weigh every single thing we do against what kind of effect it could have on the long-term for them. We spend most days working our children toward a goal of one kind or another; and we spend all the other days in celebration of them getting there. Our entire lives are focused on the lives, the struggles, and the accomplishments of everybody else.

So is it a good gift to give a mother another opportunity to think about someone else? Talk about someone else? Celebrate the good someone else is contributing to society? Well, a good mother might not argue. A mother who loves in humility won't put up much fuss. And honestly, there's never going to be a time a decent mother sees her child graduate and begrudges them of it. But as a mother who is treated well, I have no problem informing all the gift-givers out there--graduating is not a Mothers' Day gift. Whether you're an administrator who has idiotically planned this, or a graduate who thinks it's a sufficient way to honor your mother, listen: this is a "gift" that indicates a giver who is not only not grateful, but has no idea what mothers do--for them, for all of society.

If you're a graduate today, dude it's not your fault. Congratulations. But give your mom a freaking cake or something. Put a moment aside that's hers, and hers alone. She worked hard to get you here, and deserves some credit.