Another Mother’s Day has come and gone and the rankings are in. This year’s winner was Clara Hasenpfeffer of Moose Liver Falls, Maine. Clara gave birth to twins on Mother’s Day yet still managed to do the laundry and vacuuming, cook dinner for her mother and knit matching onesies for the new babies.
Clara’s victory was a bitter pill to swallow. My sons William and Thomas and I had vowed that we’d do everything we could to make sure their mother, Lori, won this year after her disappointing 5th place finish the year before. We’d supported Lori last year, but hadn’t done enough. So this year we started planning weeks in advance and had Lori’s Mother’s Day itinerary worked out to the smallest detail. We set her alarm for 4 a.m. so she would have plenty of time to make us a great breakfast, complete with freshly churned butter and maple syrup tapped from the neighbor’s tree.
Unfortunately, she slept right through the alarm so there was no breakfast. And to make matters worse, she not only couldn’t find the syrup tap, she couldn’t even find the butter churn.
But the day was young and we still had hope. We’d left our dirty clothes all over the house so Lori could collect and launder them. We urged her to earn bonus points by using a washboard again this year to make sure they were really clean, but, like the butter churn, the washboard had gone missing since last Mother’s Day too.
Next it was time for her to spade up the garden. Strangest thing, though, the spade was missing. I knew that moms get points for being organized, and I was afraid that not knowing where the tools of her trade were would damage Lori’s score.
Since she couldn’t do the garden we urged her to mow the lawn, but the gas can was gone. So we moved on to cleaning out the eave troughs but dang it, the ladder was missing too. And things just went downhill from there. She couldn’t find her sewing kit so there went making a quilt depicting the inaugurations of all the presidents. And she couldn’t find her pruning shears so there was no chance of her trimming the rose bushes so they’d look like a family of aardvarks.
Finally, it was time to make Mother’s Day dinner. I figured she could earn a lot of points there (and she needed them – she hadn’t accomplished anything all day). But the stove wouldn’t light — apparently, no one paid the gas bill this month.
Being quite hungry by then we did the only thing we could and went out for dinner. And boy were we surprised – there were mothers everywhere! Doesn’t anyone care about being a good mom anymore? None of these women cooked dinner for their families on the one day every mom is supposed to do her very best. Worse yet, none of these mothers appeared to feel even a little bit guilty about it.
Just what is this world coming to?
Lori finished dead last this year – no surprise since she didn’t accomplish anything motherly. And honestly, as badly as things went this year, I don’t think we’ll even try to help her win next year. She can just do what she wants next Mother’s Day. If the guilt and shame of not being a good mother on Mother’s Day doesn’t bother her, the boys and I will just have to get used to eating out…