To Retail and Other Service Industry Employers on Mother’s Day

First let me make a few things very clear. I don’t hate Mother’s Day, nor do I hate mothers. I’m not unemotional, unpatriotic, or lacking in empathy or compassion. I’m not looking to rain on anyone’s parade, or trying harsh your mellow. I’m not working up to a feminist (or anti-feminist) screed. I bear no ill will toward anyone with progeny, and I don’t hate babies or children. None of that. Adoption is a viable option for many people but that’s not what this discussion is about. Are we good? OK.

Employers, please, for the love of all that is civilized, do not require or even strongly suggest to your employees that they should express a greeting of “Happy Mother’s Day!” to every female patron past puberty.

I get that pleasantries are an accepted part of transactional relationships. Have a nice day, thanks for shopping with us, please come again, these are warm, time-honored snippets of conversation. Where we start running into trouble is when we impose assumptions on the private lives of customers and patrons. I’m certainly not going to touch the “Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas” fracas with a 10-foot pole. While it arguably may be a similar debate, faith and religious beliefs is not where I’m going with this.

Where I’m going instead, is the assumption that is made when a “Happy Mother’s Day!” greeting is made indiscriminately to any post-pubescent female. Logically we all know that not every woman is a mother. Some may not be by choice. Some may not be by happenstance – that is they’d like to be a mother someday, but just haven’t had the opportunity yet. There may be a few militants in the child-free-by-choice camp that get offended at the suggestion that they’d have any urge to breed, but even that’s not my point.

Beyond those who aren’t mothers by choice or happenstance, are those that used to be mothers, have tried to be mothers, or simply can’t be mothers. Women in these categories all deal with that status in different ways, dependent in part on how recently they found themselves in that status, and how they’ve dealt with processing it and the grief that comes along with it.

A woman of almost any age could have recently lost their child due to illness or accident. A woman may be in the middle of a long, on-going, and costly attempt at getting pregnant. A woman may have come to the end of that journey of trying to conceive without success.

Many of these women work hard at graciously smiling and saying, “Thank you,” to the throw-away “Happy Mother’s Day!” Many times they will succeed outwardly, but inwardly those words have just driven a spike through their heart. Yet another reminder of their loss imposed on them during a transaction that should have nothing to do with motherhood.

But for some women, the pain may be so fresh or still so close to the surface, that the chirpy greeting will cause them to dissolve in a puddle right before your employee’s eyes, bringing tears instead of a smile, then mortification as she realizes she hasn’t been able to contain her reaction.

The thing is, we don’t know. For all anyone knows, your female customer could have buried her son last week, or had a miscarriage yesterday. She just wants to pay for her groceries, buy that pair of jeans, or pay her restaurant tab without being reminded yet again that she doesn’t have that status that she used to have, was about to have, or desperately wants.

Too often we think of motherhood as something that all adult women will want to experience in their lifetimes, and that blanket greetings like this do no harm. The good wishes, if not directly applicable, should just be accepted with aplomb. The speaker didn’t know of your private pain, and the greeting makes other people happy, so why shouldn’t it be given?

We engage in these conversations as a matter of social form. The content of the exchange is intended as pleasantries and good will, not as an evaluation and adoration of someone’s reproductive history.

So unless your customer has a small child with her that’s tugging at their hand and repeating, “Mama!” endlessly, please don’t assume that she’s a mother. Don’t put her in the awkward position of either feeling the need to disclaim motherhood status or to hide a painful emotional reaction that may come. 

My birthday falls on Mother's Day this year. I used to resent it as a child, having to share "my day" with my mother. This year, having just closed the final chapter on our attempts to have a family, for me to be a mother, I resent that the calendar lined up that way this time. I'd like to be able to go out to dinner with my husband on my birthday and not have everyone assume we're celebrating Mother's Day. So instead, I'll probably be a hermit for the day, though with all the hoopla going on already, it may be more like a hermit week this week. 

I know this is my issue to deal with, but I do not believe I am alone in this sentiment that the indiscriminate greeting doing harm, even if it's a relatively rare event, is worse than sticking with your every day neutral greeting on Mother's Day and the time leading up to it. 

There’s nothing wrong with “Have a nice day!” Truly.

I Was A Mother: For One Precious Year

I hate Mother's day; with an all-consuming passion. When I was a little girl, every few years I had to share my birthday (May 11) with Mother's Day, which made me feel cheated - in only the way that little girls can feel cheated by such things.

In 1992, when I was 25, I became estranged from my own mother. She's long had her own issues, but when I moved back to California from Washington and temporarily stayed with her, she transferred her anger over her own issues to me. I had plenty of my own things to deal with, and wasn't going to take responsibility for her problems (that were definitely not my problems) - so I moved out and haven't really spoken with her voluntarily since. One glaring exception was when I agreed to go to a family reunion in Kansas City, MO in 2006 - and only because both of my sisters would be there. Not really much since. There's too many additional things about my mother that aren't what this is all about, but I can't imagine we'll have anything resembling a relationship again.

After that - I spent time being annoyed at the generic "holiday" greetings thrown at people by retail or service workers; often under threat of discipline by their managers. People, please - don't throw such generic things at people. For Mother's Day - you cannot assume that every female of child bearing age or older is a mother. They may have just lost their mother, or lost a child. They may be living that special, lonely hell of desperately wanting to be a mother but for a variety of reasons have not been able to achieve that. Your generic "Happy Mother's Day" can make them anything but happy. It might just be a slight annoyance at the assumption, or you may find yourself with a woman suddenly trying to hold back sobs while putting her credit card back in her wallet and trying to make a mad dash to her car in the parking lot.

Just Don't Do It.

But for one beautiful day in May, 2010 - I was a mother. I've mentioned briefly that we used to be foster parents. Baby J came into our lives in early September 2009 when she was just 8 days old - freshly discharged from the hospital. She was the happiest, most adorable baby ever. With foster children, you cannot assume that you will have them for any specific length of time, though due to her birth circumstances we knew we would have her at least 6 months. To say that she was a delight is a historic understatement. While the Man hates photos, this one of the two of them when she was 6 weeks old speaks volumes to how we felt about her (her face is blurred, as identifying photos made publicly available were not allowed - though I think she'd be hard to identify from this photo, I won't take that chance. Those who have a Friends connection with me on Flickr have access to un-retouched photos.)

Early in 2010, as J approached 6 months old, we decided we were ready for a second child - we were licensed for two, so we told our licensing worker that we would open our home for another child, preferably one age 3 or under. 

Very shortly afterward, we got a call about a little girl T, who was 5 days shy of her 3rd birthday. I remember I was in the middle of a select luncheon at school with the former CEO of Wal-Mart -and my cell phone goes off. Out on the balcony of the building on campus I had back and forth calls between our worker and the Man, trying to decide if we should take the placement. I actually twisted his arm a bit (ironically) and we accepted. I had to return to school that night, so she'd arrived at the house about 20 minutes before I had to go - frightened, not wanting to leave the social worker that she knew, and clearly not sure what to make of Baby J, the Man, and the cats.  She crawled under the coffee table with a baby blanket and fell asleep, and wouldn't let either of us put her to bed - she slept there all night, and the Man slept on the floor with her. 

T arrived still in diapers, barely verbal, and with that dead, 1000-yard stare you see in shell-shocked soldiers, not something that should be on the face of a barely 3-year old child. We advocated fiercely and frequently for her, but very few of our concerns were addressed. By the time she had an early pre-school intervention she'd been with us 5 months, and had actually grown into quite a chatter box - though her enunciation and diction still needed more work than a developmentally typical 3.5 year old. 

So Mother's Day 2010 I was actually a mother. If anyone said or says to me I was "only" a foster mother, I'd have shanked them. No, these girls were not mine by blood, and not even mine legally except through temporary guardianship of foster parenting, but I was their parent. The Man bought me a beautiful card "from the girls" that talked about being Mom had nothing to do with DNA, but instead was about love. I cried. While I was slightly annoyed I had to share the day with his mother (something I had previously expressed not wanting to do) - in the end it didn't matter, we got to celebrate Mother's Day for me. 

T blossomed over the summer, but as she grew more comfortable with us the issues that were brought about by her background continued to come to the surface. We were continually dismissed in our requests for her as being inexperienced parents, or that she was "just 3" - both of which were true, but were not the root cause of the problems we were trying to solve. As fall came around, things just devolved. We gave it our all - we were committed to T, willing to go the long haul with her, but we weren't getting any support, and were specifically forbidden to seek some help we had been asking to be given. 

It came to a head in November in a way I won't describe here now - as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog I am still considering writing a book about it, but there's too much to it for a single blog post. On one awful night, the decision was made (by others) to move T from our home. In doing so, they chose to take J as well. We were heartbroken. J's case had progressed to the point where parental rights were being terminated, and we were in the very early stages of working to adopt her. She was 15 months old, and we were the only parents she had ever known. 

What happened afterward is an experience I'd not wish on my worst enemy. We spent months and thousands of dollars trying to regain custody of J, but in the end were blocked at every turn. Our relationship with our local social services agency was irreparably damaged. We were no longer parents, and were not going to be parents again in this way.

Mothers Day 2011 was beyond painful. We had just effectively come to the end of fighting for custody of J, the Man's mother was dying of cancer (she would pass a month later on June 8), and I was struggling to finish the last year of my MBA program. I think I probably did shoot daggers at many people who gave me that crappy generic "Happy Mother's Day" - I was no longer a mother, and it stabbed me through the heart every day. The girls' room had the door closed - like this black hole of grief kept at bay only by this small wooden barrier. I had to take the portraits down off the walls of the living room and the hallway - they were hidden away in that room, I couldn't bear to see them. 

As I began my weight loss surgery journey, Dr. Fuzz told me that he wanted all of his pre-menopausal female patients on birth control, as those with fertility issues often had their fertility come roaring back, often very soon after surgery. I rolled my eyes at him, but agreed. I didn't expect a positive response, but I also asked if he thought fertility might come back, would he consider allowing me to attempt an IVF perhaps a bit sooner than the 2 years they want most patients to wait - after all, I was 45, and at that age, every month counts. 

Fuzz told me that if I complied and got into my goal range, he'd consider approving my working with the reproductive endocrinologist again (we'd tried multiple rounds of injections without and with IUI in 2006/2007, but stopped short of IVF due to lack of funding at the time). I'm still 30-odd pounds above the top of Fuzz's goal range for me, but when I have my 6-month follow-up appointment with him on May 31 it's something I'm going to bring up. I just had another Depo shot the other day, so it will be a few months before that wears off, and any IVF attempt takes months of prep - I want to coordinate all of that appropriately. 

While I cannot yet bring myself to fully believe that this will be successful, I cannot walk away from the possibility of one last attempt at being a mother. Despite all the trials we went through during that time, and despite the horrific ordeal afterward, it was something that I desperately want to have in my life. 

Now in 2012, this Mother's Day is a year of transition. the Man's mother is no longer with us - something we'll definitely miss. I'm desperately trying not to eviscerate people who spout the generic Mother's Day crap. And finally, of course, I'm recovering from a month of hell with the fissures and surgery. I'll be doing my best on Sunday to ignore everything about Mother's Day - but I can't help but have that tiny bit of hope in the back of my mind that perhaps at this time next year, we may be expecting a child of our own. I can't believe it, but I cannot give up. 

I was a mother - for one precious year. Please, universe, let me be so again soon - for the rest of my life.