Reminder: Next Year, Skip Mothers’ Day

Mothers’ Day sucks at our house.  This is something that simply is. Nothing can be done to fix it. In fact, attempts to fix it just make it worse.

We knew to skip the first Mothers’ Day Pop Tart was with us. She had been placed with us on April 30. She came to us from a disrupted placement – meaning it was supposed to have been an adoptive home, but then things went sideways. She called the parents in that home “Dad” and “Mom”. So, we knew. When I sent a note to family and friends to tell them of the placement, I also specifically asked them NOT to send me anything for Mothers’ Day, not to call, etc. We knew it would be a hard day for Pop Tart, and decided to just kind of skip it.

I do not remember our second Mothers’ Day, which is probably for the best. For our third one, Cupcake was also with us, and both girls had had school projects where they made things for Mothers’ Day. Cupcake was still having visits with her birth mom, and so we spent the day focusing on birth moms. Pop Tart was jealous and vocal about it but because we were in the mode to juggle both girls, the day itself was not too terrible.

This year, this year we made the mistake of hoping it would be a good day. Pop Tart has been with us for over three years. This was our fourth Mothers’ Day. We were not planning anything major, just having friends over for dinner, which we do every Sunday. C did make homemade jambalaya, and had gotten me a fire pit for the back patio (which we would have gotten anyway, we just called it my Mothers’ Day gift).

So not a huge deal, but we still hoped it would be a good day. Pop Tart got up and made us breakfast in bed. But from pretty much the moment breakfast ended, the day downhill. Some of it was completely our fault – decisions we had made earlier in the weekend, like not making her do homework on Friday or Saturday, coming back to haunt us. Because when a kid is upset and confused about “Mom”s, figuring out surface area is totally something that is going to go well.

An hour before people were supposed to arrive, I was considering calling the whole thing off. She was upset. I was upset. And we were just feeding each other’s monsters.

You could argue that Pop Tart has 6 mothers. If you only count the ones she has lived with for more than 6 months, you get to 4. You do not get down to 2 until you count the ones she has lived with for more than a year, or has called “Mom” – and I am not part of that latter group.

So Mothers’ Day for her brings up memories of birth mom, memories of the other woman she has called “mom”, who left her less than two weeks before Mothers’ Day. And then there’s me – the mean one in her life every day, making her practice trumpet and do her homework, setting and enforcing rules, and fighting with her, on Mothers’ Day, to try and get some math done.

And for me, no matter how much I know Mothers’ Day is hard for her, I would like it, if she could, I do not know, be nice to me for a day. But she is a tween, so even without all the other things, that may not be possible. And no matter how much I can remind myself that this is a hard day for her, I still have my feelings.

And Mothers’ Day, for me, really reminds me how much she does not think of me as her mother. For her, bio-mom is mom. And might always be. I am simply the woman who is there, day in and day out. But not yet for as long as bio-mom was. I have another four years to get through before we can rival that.

And so, Mothers’ Day tends to leave us both yelling, both crying, and no one ends the day happy.

No matter how much I want my little girl to think of me as her mom, I cannot force it. I cannot make it happen. And that means I need to let go of Mothers’ Day. Maybe someday she will want to celebrate it with me. Maybe she never will. I do not know. And I need to find a way to come to peace with that.

So yeah, next year I think we will skip Mothers’ Day.