The Moms Are All Right
In case it has escaped your notice, this Sunday is Mother’s Day. There are recommendations coming from all directions about how best to spend your day: tell your family exactly what you want so that you aren’t disappointed; give her the gift of time; go out for a fancy brunch but make sure you reserved a table yourself three months ago; do something meaningful with your beloved children; and perhaps most commonly: Escape! Pretend you never had kids in the first place and go get day-drunk and have a mani-pedi!
We love all of these great recommendations. But because we are not (yet) able to give the gift of time, our favorite idea stems from Well column writer Jancee Dunn, who suggested that as a Mother’s Day gift, you could make your mom a list of everything she was right about. This is a beautiful idea. But for us, it inspired a slightly different proposal: we thought we would invite everyone we ever had an argument or disagreement with about anything ever to tell us that we were right all those times.
For example, remember the time your partner thought your kid just had a bad cold but you insisted on taking them to the doctor and it turned out to be strep? You were right. Remember all those times you told your kids they would be a “basket case” tomorrow (because you thought it would be fun to copy how your own mom talked) if they didn’t go to bed on time? You were right. You don’t even have to limit yourself to motherhood. Any petty disagreement from any time in your life will do. Remember in high school when you told your friend it wouldn’t be cool to dress up in an elaborate costume for their student council election speech? Yeah..were you right.
OK, so maybe you weren’t right every time, and maybe your dumb friends and family won’t play along with this little game. But the point is this: there is so much advice out there and a lot of pressure to be a certain kind of parent or to behave a certain way in parenthood. It’s okay to drop any pretense you feel yourself falling prey to and remember that your gut instincts are good. In other words - we’ll just say it - you were probably almost always if not always always right.
To all the moms out there, we see you and wish you the happiest of Mother’s Days. To the non-mom parents reading this, we celebrate you too.