Mother's Day Manners

Greetings!

Welcome to a very special Friday—one that separates a lot of us by just 48 hours from breakfast in bed, perhaps a flower or present, and handmade cards crafted by little hands using equal portions of crayon, glitter, glue, and love! May I wish each of you who are moms a very happy, blessed, and memory-making Mother’s Day!

This weekend I’ll be with my mom enjoying a tradition we started ten years ago this Saturday! The day before Mother’s Day, we enjoy tea together at a favorite tea room. When we began in 1999, Marc, my oldest son, was just two years old, so the day out of town at tea was a fantastic break for me as well as a special time to share with my mom.

When Marc was five, several days before the tea, he looked up at me with his striking blue-gray eyes and asked, “Mommy, can I please come, too!” My first thought, to be honest, was not an enthusiastic, “Yes.”

It was more of a silent, internal, unapologetic, not-for-a-million-dollars-am-I-putting-you-in-the-van-and-taking-you-with-me thought. However, what I said was, “Sweetie, this is my special time to be with Nana. She’s my mom and I want to celebrate that I love her.” Marc studied me for a moment, twitched his nose upward in thought and replied, “But you’re my mom, and I want to celebrate you.”

My next words were “Let’s go to the mall tonight! A new tradition deserves a new shirt!” When Corbett turned four, he joined us. Last year, Kent, my husband, celebrated his inaugural meal. He sat right next to me, munching tiny sandwiches and scones and sipping hot peach tea. Their presence at tea is my Mother’s Day present.

What other gift could equal it? There are days when I’d give anything for a few hours of “no boys!” But then I think to myself, I’m going to get about a million of those hours once these two little guys grow up and leave home. They’ll be busy celebrating Mother’s Day with their wives, and I’ll wish for the days when my boys gave me a gift more precious than anything ever sold in any store--the gift of their love poured over me more abundantly and graciously than tea from the china pot.

Since becoming a mom, my Mother’s Days have been happy ones. For a lot of women it’s not that way. They mourn the passing of their beloved moms; they cringe at the thought of their mom because of some deep wound; they want so much to be a mom but haven’t been able to become one yet; they’re a mom feeling suffocated by the grief they feel over the loss of their sweet child. The card-giving, candy-eating, present-exchanging day makes their heads spin, not their hearts dance.

The year before Marc was born I suffered one such Mother’s Day. Just three weeks before the holiday, after years of trying to conceive, I suffered a sudden miscarriage. When I entered the sanctuary that Sunday, an usher carrying a basket of carnations greeted me. “Happy Mother’s Day, pretty lady!” He innocently beamed. “I know you must be a mom! Here’s a flower.” In a sudden daze, I accepted the flower from his hand and rushed to the bathroom, crying. Kent followed after me, and we left without attending church that morning. I wish I had known then what I know now about what that flower represented. It would have made the incident more bearable.

Today I’ve gathered for you a few Mother’s Day manners that will hopefully help your day whether it’s one you’re celebrating or avoiding.

These tips are special to me in another way. It was one year ago this week that I began my former “Monday Morning Manners” newsletter. We outgrew that quickly, didn’t we? It was these tips that started it all. It gives me great joy to celebrate my first anniversary of writing.

This week also marks our blog’s first month anniversary. Wow—look how far we’ve come in just 30 days!

You all are the very best! Thank you for being you!

Mother’s Day Manners

• Every woman 18 and older should accept a carnation if one is offered. The flower you take is in honor of your mother, not you. It doesn’t symbolize whether or not you’re a mom.

• If you have a strained, or even non-existent, relationship with your mom, you can still accept a flower out of respect for the role of mothers in society.

• Carnations are traditionally given because they were the favorite flower of Anna Reeves Jarvis, the mother of the women who campaigned for Mother’s Day to become a national holiday.

• You take a white carnation if your mother is deceased and a pink carnation if she is living.

• Many churches, for the sake of simplicity, offer just one color of carnation.

• If you find yourself the lucky recipient of a corsage (It’s sad that they’re pretty much a thing of the past!), it’s correctly worn on your left side—the side of your heart! Wear a corsage high on your shoulder with the flower pointing up and the stem pointing down.

• Mother’s Day corsages (unlike prom flowers) don’t need to match or coordinate with your outfit. Regardless of the look (just like all those macaroni necklaces!), wear them with abandon, pride, and love!

Join me Monday when we talk about Seven Cell Phone “Sins” You Want to Avoid! It’s a fun posting that points out some things we all probably do without even realizing it and how we could do it more graciously.

If you’re new, welcome! To receive simple, savvy, sincere tips each week, please join me! Just enter your e-mail address in the box at the top right of the page!

Blessings,