The Mother of All Mother’s Days
May 10th, 2020
Mother’s Day — a beautiful day filled with love for the ones who carried us and raised us. And also a day filled with pressure and expectations. Mix in a pandemic and this year will be the mother of all Mother’s Days.
Think about Mother’s Days past: Kids are expected to be on their best behavior. Husbands are expected to be on their best behavior and make sure the kids are on their best behavior. And even mothers have to be on their best behavior — expecting nothing and appreciating everything.
All while enjoying a breakfast that costs as much as a lobster dinner.
I’ll never forget the year my family completely forgot Mother’s Day. It was the Sunday of my son’s Bar Mitzvah — the weekend I’d planned for over a year. I threw an out-of-towner’s brunch with a Mother’s Day theme, except when it ended my family realized they’d forgotten I was a mother too.
As they ran off to CVS to buy a card and I furiously cleaned up the house, there was a knock on the door. It was my neighbor who, with no knowledge of the day I was having, handed me a bouquet of flowers and told me that she admired me as a mother. I burst into tears.
That year I decided that the best way to celebrate Mother’s Day is to celebrate not only our own mothers, but the other mothers: the ones who we watch from afar, admire and emulate.
This Mother’s Day, during a pandemic now free of fancy brunches and spa days, I’m celebrating my other mother heroes. The mothers working from home while home-schooling. The mothers juggling taking care of their kids and their elders. And the mothers serving on the front lines in hospitals, grocery stores and everywhere deemed essential.
I especially want to celebrate my sister — a fierce momma bear for her grown children and grandchildren. She’s my talented, crafty sister who sews outfits for her grandchildren (and now face masks for everyone) in between treating patients as a therapist from early in the morning until late at night. And this year, she’s my sister who was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She started her journey in September, and since then I’ve traveled to be with her through each milestone — from diagnosis to chemotherapy treatments, post-surgery and now virtually as she went through radiation every day for five weeks during a pandemic. We recently celebrated the end of her radiation with a virtual toast.
Through it all I’ve learned from her strength, resilience and focus on being there for her children and, now, her newest granddaughter born just six weeks ago. The one she hasn’t been able to hold yet.
Since her diagnosis and especially at the start of this pandemic, my sister’s health was my biggest worry. But I heard from many friends who are breast cancer survivors who told me that so many of the tools they used during their journey have helped them through this pandemic: self-care, managing fear, and focusing on what’s truly important. Something we can all admire and emulate.
This year I’ve sent “other mothers” Mother’s Day cards to my old neighbors and good friends who teach me how to be a better mother by being who they are. And to honor my other mother hero, my sister, I’m walking the Breast Cancer Coalition’s Virtual Pink Ribbon Walk.
And for me, I’ve already received my greatest gift as a mother ever: knowing my children are safe, well, and inspiring me every day with who they are. That, and my husband bought the perfect pandemic gift: a flower-decorated tub of sanitized wipes.
For more on the Virtual Pink Ribbon Walk, go to bccr.org.