Are You My Mother?

Under the best of circumstances, Mothers Day can be a challenge. Whole, completely intact, and fully connected families are complicated. Throw in a strained relationship or two, a divorce, a remarriage, a custody battle or some kind of physical or emotional gap and the potential for stress, if not full on, pedal to the medal 8 cylinder pandemonium is possible.


So, there is the thing with my mother. Mothers Day comes 15 days into a conversational drought instigated by the chasm formed by her discovery that she can not tolerate the way I vote.

Of all things.

I can tolerate – and have tolerated – quite a bit about Estelle that would send a less liberal person running. Inclusive of the way she votes. How ironic. So I call her on Mothers Day, as I should, but choose a time when I know the conversation will be truncated in order to get myself and the kiddos to Mass. Oddly, she mentions that she did not send a card to me because all of the Hallmark stores she went to lacked the required Mothers Day card specifically designed for one’s daughter. And evidently, no other “For Someone Special on Mothers Day” variety would do. I am sure the lesbian parents and transgender families have similar laments. (There is a mint to be made here, people! Someone start an Off the Beaten Path greeting card company please! I'll even give you a name for it: My Two Dads Greetings.) We deftly avoid the subject of politics (the strain in her voice at skipping its normal entrée into regular conversation is audible) and she merely mentions that she finds it troubling that the world is suddenly in financial collapse so abruptly with this administration and… Oh my, where did the morning go? Better get going! Don’t want to get the hairy eyeball from Father.

J.’s drought was likely to be more troubling.

Or not.

Perhaps with the Squatters just having arrived at Mommom’s it was too soon to be doing any entertaining. The lack of an invitation to break bread did not mean anything necessarily. So, as he would have on other occasions, J. piled the girls, the gifts and the greeting cards into the car and went over the river and through the woods and was in her driveway in 15 minutes. The absence of any scheduled gathering let me off the hook entirely. Happy Mothers Day to me!

They arrived to find no one but the Scungili family dog to greet them. No happy couple. No Mommom. No cars in the driveway. They went in (the door is usually unlocked, it is that kind of neighborhood) and made themselves reasonably comfortable. For an hour.

After an hour, they placed the gifts, cards and flowers on the dining room table, left, went to get lattes, and drove home. The whole trip lasted about 2 hours. As they walked in the door, J. got a call from his mother. She had been at the grocery store. The grocery store that is 2 doors away from the house. For the routine 2 bags of groceries because that is all she can carry.

And that took more than two hours?

Accepting the fact that Mommom drives to the store 2 doors away for a variety of reasons, how is it that 2 bags of groceries took two hours to purchase? And why is Mommom doing the grocery shopping anyway when the younger and moderately more able-bodied newlyweds should be volunteering to do so?

And if that’s all there is to the story, why was there no “Have you gone far? Stop back for dinner so I can see the girls!” like there normally would be?

The possibilities are endless and none of them pass the sniff test. For once, the fact that J. and I have custody issues to contend with was not the most troubling matter of the day.