Happy Mother's Day 2019 ... or not

I actually hate mother's day. I imagine Mom herself started it.
She felt that once her own children started having children,
she shouldn't have to celebrate Mother's Day.

I don't know what her objection to the celebration was. I'm pretty sure she liked it when we all gathered at her house. Maybe she could appreciate sloppy little cards from actual kids, but didn't quite enjoy the flowery or jokey commercial cards she got from her
adult offspring?

Maybe she didn't like to be reminded of her own mother, whom no one liked. Well, and who liked no one. When Grandma Huckabone died and we were all hanging out at her house after the funeral, I actually hugged and kissed my mother for the first time in my adult memory (I was twenty-five), and Mom whispered to me, fiercely, "When I die, I hope people will miss me!"

She got her wish. Everyone loved Mom. I miss her every day.

In any case, I hate it when the clerk at Publix says, "Happy Mother's Day!" to me. I'm not a mother, and my own mother is dead, so fuck you.

Furthermore, why should it be so public? Shouldn't we celebrate our own damned mothers in our own damned way? Yes. We should. Imagine how odd it would be if Wegmans clerks said, "Hey! I hear it's your mom's birthday! Tell her happy birthday from me!" 

Also, I'm fairly certain that Piggly Wiggly employees don't wish every man a Happy Father's Day near the third Sunday in June. I resent the assumption that if I'm a woman, I must be a mother, when apparently the same assumption is not made for men ... even though men can be fathers and not even know it.

In related news, my buddy Mike recently asked me what the feminine form of curmudgeon is. I told him it's not a gender-specific word. Still, I bet in Latin it's barbara.

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Photo by Vivian Maier. "Untitled." 1962. Used with great respect but without permission.