Mother's Day

Mother's Day has come and gone, and with it all the guilt that we moms can pile on to our significant others and/or children. I favor guilting them into doing things that last - digging a flowerbed, defrosting the freezer, painting the kitchen (preferably all at the same time) over the easy-come-easy-go things like buying flowers, candy, and taking me out to dinner. Mother's day is a good time to remind the kids of how agonizing their births were, how you suffered when they caught chicken pox, all the barf and poop you bravely cleaned up. A few tales of how you amused yourself in childhoood with nothing but a cardboard box and some sticks, with narry a Nintendo to be seen. How you worked your fingers to the bone helping Mom with the canning, the butter churning, the garden weeding. How you never had a car of your own to drive until you bought it yourself, after you finally got a job at the Piggly-Wiggly bagging groceries. Even if the above aren't true, do you think they'll realize that? They think anything before 1970 is ancient history. They can't imagine having to get up to change channels on the TV, or collecting pop bottles off the road so you could get enough change to buy a soda. Hanging laundry out on the line (no dryer), ironing (no perm. press), scrubbing floors with a bucket and brush. Sweeping and using carpet beaters (no vacuum). Gosh, it makes me tired just thinking about it. Anyway, even if I didn't get all the free labor I could have wished for, the candy-flowers-dinner were nice, the cards were sweet, and I love each kid (and hubby) more than I can say. Hope yours was the same!