Mama

I hate that I hate this day.

I should love this day, shouldn't I?

I hate that I've known since the first one, where I "should've" loved it, I would always hate it.

She made it so big. For weeks before we made preparations to make it a day dedicated to propping up who she thought she was, who she made us believe she was. We planned breakfasts and lunches and dinners. We made gifts, we wrote poems, we collected little items that should have made her smile on how much we loved her.

Then somehow we still fell short. None of it was enough. Every year we got that same speech about how hard it was not to have that man prodding us along and making it what it "should've" been. The same dissatisfied sighs as she went through the day... Making us feel we had failed yet again. After all, she would somewhere say that all she wanted was "a clean house and obedient children". As if we weren't already the most obedient, brainwashed little worshipers. As if we had any idea how to make a house soaked in disappointment and neglect ever feel clean.

That first year when I had my own child, and wonder of wonders actually had the man there to make the day what it "should've" been... It was still somehow my job to make the day for someone else,  who didn't even want me as a daughter.

A decade later and it's only ever been that. I suppose that's my fault for remaining the little girl just hoping I make everyone happy enough so that I don't feel like I'm a burden.

There are these beautiful glimpses now where I'm not that little girl. Where these people return love for love and don't let me strive for it when I don't have to... Moments, even away from them, where I finally step back and stop running a race no one asked me to run.

My kids don't spend weeks getting ready for this one day. Instead they simply tell me on a Saturday morning on the couch that I'm enough. No matter what kind of day it's been they still want mama to sing their songs to them at bedtime. They don't stress out about cleaning up and being perfect or being worthy. They're just my kids who love me and know I love them, because that's what's normal and right.

Fuck this whole Mother's Day thing. That's what I want. Healthy, happy kids who know I love them, who aren't afraid that some day I might not.