Mother's Day and Mounds bars

Mother's Day. It's one of the biggies, right up there with Christmas or Valentine's Day.

In other words, you better not forget mom.

Oh, most moms will tell their kids something like, "You don't have to get me anything. Just to know you love me is enough."

My two daughters have a tough time when it comes to Mother's Day. My birthday happens to fall just a few days after the Biggie. So, they are challenged to keep both special.

Many a year have I said the "just to know you love me," scpheel. Or this. "Just get me one of those double Mounds bars, that will be enough. One side for Mother's Day, one for my birthday."

That works for Mother's Day, but after I have stuffed both sides into my mouth that day, when the birthday arrives, I am left wondering (okay, making them feel just a tad guilty) where the birthday present is.

"But you said just a Mounds bar," they would stammer.

Or, we tell our kids not to get us anything, then when they do, we chastise them. "I said don't get anything." Secretly, we love it.

(Aren't we moms good at guilt? Actually, I think advertising agencies have mothers as CEOs and have picked up on that guilt theme. Have you seen the ads whereby your mother's worth is equal only to a $5,000 diamond pendant or some such other expensive gift?)

Kids have it easier when they are much younger. The imprint of their hands into clay, the finger-painted originals, the poems in which each line begins with letters spelling the word mother.

Two of my most cherished gifts came in that form, one only last year. The first was from my youngest daughter who wrote an essay for a Mother's Day contest when she was in the sixth grade. I still have that essay, which I had laminated, that talked of my child's best friend and teacher — me.

The other was part of a personal statement my older daughter had to write for admission to medical school. Her hero, she said, was (or is) her mother. She is now a first-year medical student at the great University of Washington. (Thank goodness the admissions committee doesn't really know me.)

Last year, when moving my mother from her home, we found several of those special gifts she had carefully stored in boxes marked "kids." A picture I drew when I was in second grade was among the attempt at a ceramic ashtray (my middle brother's artwork, and mind you, my mother never smoked), a small house fashioned out of pop sickle sticks, a wicker bread basket. The picture was one of birds flying in a cloud-filled, blue sky. The birds all had faces much bigger than their bodies, each with a big smile between two large ears.

I am the first to admit I am probably the worst artist God ever created. My mother knew that. But she cherished that drawing and refused to let us throw it away when she was downsizing. Same story for the ashtray, bread basket and so on.

When I was younger, I remember making something for mom in school. But, like my daughters, I would depend on my father to help me and my brothers have the perfect gift on that second Sunday in May. Now, shopping with my father was, well, let's call it, a project. My father enjoyed, really enjoyed, shopping for gifts for his wife, and particularly when the gift was from one of us.

So, off we would go to the nearest shopping center, malls not having been built yet. (Tells you how old I might be on that upcoming birthday.) Early on, all of us would eagerly pack into the car. After not too many of these trips, my brothers learned to conveniently have something else to do. Being the only daughter, I felt obliged to join my father in what always turned out to be a day-long venture. Besides, my brothers forgot the chocolate milkshake that always ended the day.

We almost always found just what we — or my dad — were looking for within the first 15 minutes after arriving at the store. Would we buy it? Oh, no. In keeping with my father's mantra — "If you are going to buy something, buy the best" - we would have to look at every lacy nightgown (or whatever we were shopping for) in the shopping center, and maybe a few more in the neighboring shopping center, before we return to purchase what we found in the first store. I once remember looking for a storage cabinet for my mother's sewing things for hours on end. I was probably 12, which made the best part of the day that chocolate milkshake.

Being a daughter and a mother has always felt a little weird to me. My focus has been to honor my mother on Mother's Day. Although my mother is 85, and my daughters in their early 20s, I still don't fell like Mother's Day is for me. It is for my mother.

This year, Mother's Day presents a few challenges for me and my brothers. Instead of arriving at her long-time home in the south end of Seattle, we will visit at the assisted-living home where she now lives. She may not know it is Mother's Day, but she will be happy to see her children. We will take her out to breakfast and talk about memories from long ago. Some she will remember, some she will not.

I will remind her of all the clothes she sewed for me and how that embarrassed me, so I would pretend we went to a store called Bells (where all the popular girls shopped) to buy them. I am sure my mother knew that, but she never said anything.

My brothers will tell stories about rolling the brand new Jeep, skipping a religion class and getting so drunk on graduation night that the bathroom became a bedroom, and how my mother was always the buffer between the incident and "wait until your father gets home."

It may be Alzheimer's disease or dementia, the doctor tells us. It doesn't really matter, for both have taken away the mother we have known and loved all our lives. When we return to her room, she will introduce me as her sister to those who live on her floor.

What Mother's Day means to me this year is the importance of actually honoring our mothers. Although it is fun to get a gift, mothers really do want to hear those powerful words, I love you. And while you're at it, don't forget those two other important words: thank you.

I do, however, look forward to that annual Mounds bar.

A very happy Mother's Day to all mothers from the staff at the Columbia Basin Herald.

Mary Powell is the managing editor of the Columbia Basin Herald.