What makes you celebrate Mother’s Day

Sunday was Mother’s Day.

I pick up the phone to call my mother. However, the F and T icons on the home screen force me to open them first. Friends are posting lovely pictures with their mommies on their timelines. Twitter is feeding tweets by celebrities showing off their childhood pics with their mothers. So cute. Without you mom, I would be nothing– I read this somewhere. The heart goes aww. Someone writes every day is a Mother’s Day. Another aww.

I keep on reading these and forget to call my own mother. I call her 3 hours later, wishing her a Happy Mother’s Day. She says thanks and we go on discussing the usual tasks at hand- what is she cooking for lunch, did the maid come etc.

I hang up and start thinking what can I do to make her feel special today. I look on the social media for help. What is it that others are doing? I go through the feeds with a mixed feeling. Should I do this because this is what most of them are doing for their mother?

Is this why one wants to celebrate Mother’s Day? Copying an idea, Liking a photo, forwarding a post? Why are we doing what we are doing? Why, on earth, do we celebrate a day for Mother’s?

I genuinely get interested in that last question. What’s the origin, what’s the story behind this day? I log on to Wikipedia, and this is what I learn.

Mother’s Day is being observed since 1908 in USA. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson made 8^th May an official national holiday. The campaign to have a Mother’s Day was started by a lady called Anna Jarvis whose mother was a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of Civil War. Anna wanted to have a day dedicated for the Mother of the family, where the family should come together and acknowledge the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world.

Later on, Anna became upset with the commercialization of this day. Hallmark and subsequently others tried to add the money angle to this otherwise loving day. Anna wanted children to give hand written personal notes to their mother and not buy cards and sign them. She died in 1948 with the regret that it didn’t turn out the way she envisaged.

I pause through the scrolls of feeds and tweets and WhatsApp forwards and wonder if it is all that commercial? Are a Hallmark/Archies and now social media compelling us to show our love and gratitude to our mother?

What can I do today, and only today that could tell her what her being means to me. What is it about today that makes me give her gifts, send her flowers, take her shopping or for a nice dinner. Have I lost opportunities in the other 364 days of not telling her my love for her that I need to do it now? Am I being forced to be a daughter who needs to show her love?

My chain of thoughts gets disturbed by my daughter’s pleads. Mom, I made this for you-Happy Mother’s Day again. I saw the lovely card, which obviously the teacher instructed her to make and my heart melted.

The questionnaire of a daughter ended with the answer sheet of a mother.

As a daughter, I don’t need one single day to tell my mother what she means to me and how blessed I am to be her daughter. But as a mother, I do need this day for my daughter to do special things for me, to be told to take the day off, to be assured that whatever I am doing for them is noted and to be given that extra hug and kiss.

Thank you Anna for fighting to make this day a reality. Even with the commercialization around it, the mother in me surely needs a day for acknowledgement.

Image courtesy: internet