Why I hate Mother’s Day

“Happy Mother’s Day,” he said, looked at me and gave me the receipt. He meant well, so do all the others, wishing me the same. Now I just smile politely, a smile that doesn’t reach my eyes and everybody who knows me well would notice. The strangers in the stores they don’t know me, they don’t notice. How could they? It’s their job to be polite to customers. They mean no harm. The younger ones, who don’t have children, think about their own mothers. The older ones, who have children smile, think about their own kids. It’s natural so it seems.

A good friend of mine doesn’t leave her house at Mother’s Day, she sits at home and waits it out. She is a mother or has been a mother. Do you stop being a parent when your child dies? No, you don’t. A day like today hurts the ones who suffered the loss of a child. She takes a trip back on memory lane each year, looks at old pictures, and wishes the special day would just go away for good.

I don’t have children. Not by choice, but by nature’s will. Something that was hard to deal with, when I was younger. There were Mother’s Days when I got all teary-eyed and told people to, “Shuffle it”. I am not a rude person -not at all- try to be kind and succeed 95% of the time – the other 5% must be hormones.

It’s hard to want something so badly. I watched all my friends around me expecting children and it just wasn’t in the cards for us. It hurt and we felt cheated. “Making Babies,” the easiest and most natural thing in the world, was the most complicated subject in our house for a while. It took a few years until reality finally sunk in and acceptance took over. There was a day when we gave up trying and enjoyed life again the way it was. We are happily married without children. Now we joke about it and have a sticker on the car stating, “Our kids have four paws.” Not so far from the truth, our dogs are spoiled rotten.

“Well, then think about your Mother,” was another advice, I have been given a few times over the years. Really? My mother was a violent, abusive alcoholic, who would have beaten me to little, tiny pieces if I wouldn’t have given the chance to live with my Grandmother. I saw my Mother 3 more times after the age of 6 and all three encounters weren’t pretty -especially the last one. I was an adult then, stomped her verbally into the ground, gave her a piece of my educated mind. It was the final Goodbye. A big weight lifted off my shoulders then and it never came back, couldn’t bring me down any longer. Did she ever feel sad on Mother’s Day? Did she ever feel regret? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter anymore.

So, celebrating the woman who gave birth to me isn’t in the cards either.

Mother’s Day is just not my favorite day and that’s alright.