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Lunchtime Poll

Lunchtime Poll: Mother’s Day!

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, at least here in the States. Some of us have great mothers, some of us have less-than-stellar mothers, and some of us don’t have mothers at all.

white sheet of paper with the word "MoM" scrawled on it
Image courtesy of Gaby Av

So how did you choose to spend this day? Did you give jewelry? I did, and it was made by one of our very own Persephone Magazine editors. Did you bake yourself a cake to celebrate yourself? (I would have done this if I had children of my own because I do not trust husband to make me a cake.) Or did you let this day pass you by in recognition that perhaps not all mothers deserve props? If you did, then I hope you did something special for yourself, too. Tell us all about it in the comments!

By Michelle Miller

Michelle Miller is a twenty-something blogger, cook, freelance writer and editor living in Seattle, Washington. She’s a feminist trying ever-so-hard to embrace her spaces, conventional or not. She looks forward to numerous bad hair days, burnt cremes, a soapbox or two, and maybe (just maybe) a yellow polka-dot bikini in the years ahead.

45 replies on “Lunchtime Poll: Mother’s Day!”

As the weather was nice, me and my younger brother helped out with gardening at mom’s country house, then later the older brother and his wife came over too, and we had a nice, casual meal. I made fruit salad instead of baking anything, and it turned out really well.

Still, it’s a touchy subject for me. I’ve had some rather bad phases with my mother, or more likely one long bad one up until I moved away from home. I’ve since come to appreciate that she did try her hardest, but often enough just couldn’t cope with 3 kids, university sweetheart turned hubby with a drinking problem, and generally hard times. I know tough childhoods are a dime a dozen, and there were okay parts, and towards the end, she actually started apologizing after incidents. But I still can’t help wondering if I could have ended up with less issues if things had been different – as in, there’s stuff that I can’t even mention to people or they’ll freak out and ask why I’m still in contact with her.

Currently the fact that she wants grandchildren way more than I want children is becoming a bit of a problem – can’t really have a reasonable discussion over it either, when one of my major reasons for being wary is not wanting to turn into the kind of parent she was.

Apologies for raining on everybody’s flowers and puppies and cupcakes.

My mom’s birthday is tomorrow so we usually celebrate both around the same time. There was brunch, made by my dad, with my grandmother (who managed to behave this time) and my parents’ best friends. It was a great day. Dad got Mom and iPad and I gave her an all expense paid trip to the farmer’s market of her choice (in the tri-county area). I gave my grandmother a big ole bouquet of roses also.

Even though it was All About Mom Day, she still gave me some things. A dozen eggs from her chickens and 6 (!) squash starts that I didn’t even know she had grown for me. I was pretty happy. :)

My parents are good people. They work hard and they have done a lot for me. They actually kinda are the boot-straps kind of people but they don’t expect any medals. Our first home may have been a single-wide trailer in my great-grandmother’s garden but you wouldn’t know that now. Two people (and an unruly infant) really can start out at zero and work their way up, as long as they work together – and their kid manages to stay out of the hospital. My childhood was very different than theirs and I am so so thankful for them making sure it stayed that way. So, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are pretty big in my family.

That sounds like a really beautiful way to spend the day! And talk about a great gift idea: all expenses paid trip to a Farmer’s Market. I. Would. Buy. EVERYTHING.

Your mom keeps her own chickens, too? I admire that. I used to have “real” eggs growing up and I miss them!

My two younger sisters and I threw a brunch for all the moms in our family. Considering I don’t cook really at all, feeding 30 people was an exhausting challenge, but it went awesome. We decorated the shit out of the place and had a bunch of  delicious stuff. I am so exhausted that I almost considered having a child so I would be included in the mom bunch instead of the hostess bunch, but then I remembered that that is a really stupid reason to procreate.

My mom came over and had a pre-Avengers movie marathon with the kids yesterday, while I went out and did some bike shopping with the Mister. I got a super fancy purple bike that is combination mother’s day/10th anniversary present. Then we rode bikes in the rain until I was pretty sure I was breathing fire.

Right now we’re riding around the neighborhood, though there are a lot of great places to go riding around here. Our neighborhood is great for training, though. It is laid out in an oval, like a track, and the oval is almost exactly  mile around, with hills of varying steepness throughout. I figure when I have the neighborhood down, I will be ready for anything.

Since it was wedding weekend, I didn’t have much time to do anything. I did make sure that I got both our moms and grandmas, and my stepmom nice picture frames, so that when we get our pictures back, they’ll get a nice print. And since my mom helped us out with the costs, I’m paying for her massage this weekend coming up once she’s back and settled in Florida.

I got some flowers from Fresh Market and made an arrangement to take over to my mom and made a chocolate with white chocolate cream cheese frosting cake for the dinner we all had last night. I always like making an arrangement myself when possible… it’s cheaper and more personal.

Here in the United Kingdom our Mother’s Day was in March. The fact that I had already celebrated didn’t stop me from feeling bad for not remembering about it, so when I got an e-mail from an American commpany telling me that NOW WAS MY LAST CHANCE EVER TO BUY ANYTHING EVER OR DO ANYTHING NICE EVER for my mother, I panicked and ran upstairs to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day.

 

She raised an eyebrow and told me that I’m a young fool -_-

Ah well. She knows I care.

My mom lives 2000 miles away, so we didn’t get to celebrate together. But I had flowers delivered for her enjoyment. She loves having fresh flowers in the house. My grandmother sent them for almost every holiday when she was alive, and I’ve been doing my best to keep the tradition up since she died.

My boyfriend’s mom only lives five miles away, so we had her over for dinner and baked a blueberry pie to celebrate.

Mmmmmmm….blueberry pie. I can’t even remember the last time I saw or ate a blueberry pie. I must live in cobbler territory.

I bet the boy’s mom loved it. And I’m sure YOUR mother loved the flowers! That’s one nice thing about having Mother’s Day in May: there are flowers to be had for less than an arm and a leg and the rights to your firstborn.

My mom is low-fuss, too. She gets really bashful if people make a big deal out of the day. In fact, she usually ends up planning her own Mother’s Day events as an excuse to get everyone together and see them, then she proceeds to do all the cooking and hosting–unless we force her to stop and sit down, of course.

I made an ice cream layer cake thing (angel food cake with chocolate chips on the bottom, vanilla frozen yogurt in the middle, strawberries with strawberry sauce on top of the yogurt, topped off with another layer of cake to seal it in). Unfortunately, my grandma ended up in the hospital this weekend so our big family dinner for yesterday was cancelled. Which means that we get cake at the staff meeting today, so it’s not totally wasted.

(Grandma is doing ok, by the way.)

It is a Weight Watchers recipe, but it’s actually delicious. I used regular frozen yogurt instead of the fat free (which I find too watery), and I added dark chocolate chips when I baked the angel food cake. Another wrinkle is that I am completely useless with a knife and ended up cutting the cake a little too thick. So instead of lots and lots of layers, it was just cake | frozen yogurt | strawberries | cake. But it was 100% OM NOM NOM!!!

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