Mommy Hates Mothers Day

**Disclaimer:  I am fully aware that my life on the whole is a pretty damn good one.  I have been lucky enough to marry a man who is my true partner and have three healthy children.  I am gainfully employed and have a comfortable home.  I would describe myself as blessed if I believed in such things.  What I've written here is how I feel.  Right now.  Today.  Please don't flame me for it.

I hate Mothers Day.  There.  I said it.

Culturally, we are set up to expect gifts, adulation, and above all rest on Mothers Day.  There are cards everywhere, endless emails from floral distributors, brunch specials at every restaurant with a chaffing dish and a buffet length table.

It is a lie. 

Mothers Day is the same as every other damn day.  I may be a little embittered, as pretty much every Mothers Day that has passed since I started crapping out kids has been spent alone with said spawn.  It's not my husband's fault his work day has fallen on this particular holiday every year since time out of mind, but it's hard to be at all enthusiastic about a "holiday" that is going to entail the same thing as every other Sunday of my life.  Get the kids up.  Feed them.  Clean things.  Do dishes.  Do laundry.  Clean some more things.  Kiss boo-boos.  Break up fights.  Kiss the boo-boos from the fights.  Clench my jaw to keep from slapping the face off my daughter when she whines about something completely insignificant again.  Clean some more things (usually the same things I have already cleaned twice).  Wipe the poop off a few asses. Watch the clock, and tick off the things that still need to be done.  Dinner, bath, the bedtime scream and cry. 

I'm supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy and fucking motherly on Mothers Day, but I don't.  It's probably the lowest point of the year for me.  I start off thinking that maybe this year it will be a nice day.  Minimal fighting, perhaps, or minimal hours spent being squashed under a pile of wriggling children. 

Then I open the door to my bedroom, and all that's shot to hell before I get the kids downstairs.  By the end of the day I want to curl up into a ball and cry.  I'm in that place right now, and I still have baths to give and bedtime stories to read.  I don't even have any damn beer to take the edge off.

Every Mothers Day I mourn the loss of my former life.  Please don't mistake my meaning, I love my children and I don't wish them gone, but I can't help but remember what life was like before them.  I hear women say "I just can't imagine my life without my kids!" and I think they are either lying, simple, or far better people than me.  I can imagine my life without my kids.  I remember life without kids. 

Being a single professional was the bomb.  I made great money, I drove a new car and I didn't know or care if it had latch.  I didn't even know what "latch" was.  I owned a cute little house that was as clean as I wanted it to be.  I could be as social or anti-social as my mood dictated.  If I wanted physical contact I went out and found it, but if I wanted to be alone? I bloody well was.  I could go out anywhere, at any time, and do anything I wanted to do.  I ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted and no one followed me around whining for some of it.  I experienced silence every day.  Every. Day.

I do love my children.  Fotunately for them, they have redeeming qualities.  Lily made a couple of funny cards for me at school and daycare, Pat spent the whole day wishing me "Happy Birthday", and Charlie pedaled a two wheel bike around the patio (with training wheels) squealing "I did it, Mommy, I did it!". 

Still, at this moment, I would gladly get in my car and drive until I ran out of gas.  I could get about 400 miles from here...

In other news:  7 days to the marathon. 

In related news:  I will be waiting on a sitter so I can leave to run the marathon, and will be finishing alone.  Then I will go home alone to take care of the children alone.  I thought this race was going to be different, but it will be the same as all the others.  I'll finish, collect my medal and my t-shirt, then get in my car and go home so I can go back to being someone's mom.  By suppertime it will be like the marathon never happened.  Only next Sunday?  I'll have beer.