F@*! Mother's Day

Mother’s Day 2005.  My first shift at Flemings.  I’m wearing a cute little pink sear sucker suit.  I know that any minute, the guy that Ingrid wants to set me up with, Sawan, will be walking in.  Then, the door opens.  Sunlight pours in behind him.  It’s like a scene from a movie.  As a bartender, he wears a different uniform then the servers, so I know that it’s him almost immediately.  “Yes, please.” Is my first thought.  Wow.  He’s handsome.

Now, even though my first impression was that he was very handsome, my first conversation with him didn’t go as well, and I didn’t actually agree to go out with him for six more months.  But I met him on Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day 2009.  Sawan and I get up a little early.  Poor guy has to work at that job that he hates.  Mother’s Day is one of the days that you just can’t ask to not work.  Never mind that he worked all the other undesirable days (Christmas Eve, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Super Bowl Sunday), they don’t care that he lost his mom and this is a difficult day for him.  He just wants to be with me.  Be with my mom.  I try to comfort him.

It’s one of the rare mornings that he has to get up around the time that I do, so he’s not cranky about me waking up first, and we snuggle in the bed.  We talk about my plans for the day (brunch with Mom and Dad at the Botanic Gardens and a ride in Mom’s new Mini Cooper convertible.  Neither of us has seen it yet).  He sheepishly tells me that he thought about getting me a Mother’s Day present from Arthur but he decided against it.  That he wants to really celebrate Mothers Day when I’m really a mother.  I agreed.  “But what if I’m just pregnant next year, can we still celebrate?”  “Ok,” he agrees.  I calculate our ages.  My mind does its tug-of-war between worry about being able to get pregnant and hope.  Hope wins.

Mothers Day, 2011.  I spend the day in pain.  I’ve been doing so well, but (not unexpectedly) today it just hurts.  How did I get here?  This isn’t the life I dreamed of.

I love my mom so much.  I’m so thankful that she survived cancer.  I’m so thankful for her role in my life.  I’m so thankful that we live close.  I’m so thankful that I get to spend the whole day with her.

So I spend the whole day beating myself up because all I can think about is how much I hate this day.  I hate it.  I hate that it is the day that brought me my husband because he was just going to be taken away.  I hate that it is the day that brought me hope for my own babies and now I feel actual physical pain at the emptiness of my arms.  I hate that it makes me filled with such ugly jealousy as I hear other women talking about how hard it is to be a mother…I hate that I feel such guilt about ruining the day for everyone else around me because all I can do is feel sorry for myself.  I look down at my watch.  Only a couple more hours to go and it will be over for another year.