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May. 4th, 2011 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_crow I have always hated Mother's Day. My mother would tell me I'd feel different about it when I had kids, but I don't, I still hate it. I could point to a bunch of perfectly sane reasons, but explaining it was difficult and left me feeling unnecessarily grinchy.
Aerin has some major tests coming up, starting with the Calculus AP exam this morning, SATs on Saturday, and Stats and English AP next Wednesday. Alice has the state minimum requirements tests coming up (Massachusetts had these in place before the unutterably vile No Child Left Behind program was instituted - these are less horrible in my mind, if kind banal). These led to a long discussion of high stakes testing, so the joke was there waiting for me this morning when Alice and I got into a discussion of parenting with a woman at the next table over. She suggested that while we were required as parents to embarrass our children, it could be modified by choosing carefully what to do for Mother's Day, and I said "Oh I don't believe in Mother's Day; we don't do high stakes holidays at our house" and both mothers laughed and Alice looked a little bewildered and I've been thinking about this ever since.
Aerin has some major tests coming up, starting with the Calculus AP exam this morning, SATs on Saturday, and Stats and English AP next Wednesday. Alice has the state minimum requirements tests coming up (Massachusetts had these in place before the unutterably vile No Child Left Behind program was instituted - these are less horrible in my mind, if kind banal). These led to a long discussion of high stakes testing, so the joke was there waiting for me this morning when Alice and I got into a discussion of parenting with a woman at the next table over. She suggested that while we were required as parents to embarrass our children, it could be modified by choosing carefully what to do for Mother's Day, and I said "Oh I don't believe in Mother's Day; we don't do high stakes holidays at our house" and both mothers laughed and Alice looked a little bewildered and I've been thinking about this ever since.
We really don't do high stakes holidays at our house.
All my efforts at creating the kinds of holidays I want and the kind of life I want have to do with really paying attention to the good stuff when it happens, and nodding to the holiday as it passes. Christmas isn't for the One Big Thing because if you need that thing, you should have it when you need it. Birthdays ditto. My own private Mother's Day is the birthday of my first child, but it isn't about me, it is about her, and her arrival and continuing presence and growing up.
Al and I have weekly dates, and those mean more to me than anything we've done for anniversaries, because those weekly doses of affection and food and humor and visit are what keeps us happy with ourselves, happy together. He asks me what to do for anniversaries, or Valentine's Day, and I tell him - it feels like Valentine's Day every week - don't do anything special.
No high stakes holidays. Show up routinely, pay attention, be kind. Give people what they need, when they need it. Overwhelm them with affection on a regular basis.