How Not to Screw Up Mother's Day

It's almost Mother's Day, that time of year when we think deeply about how our mom, or some other important maternal figure, impacted us so greatly that we're forced to thank her by buying her one of same three presents that we rotate between every year. 

I haven't always liked Mother's Day.

For one thing, I'm not eligible to participate in it, because I don't have kids.  And possibly for other reasons.

Mother's Day can also be stressful.  There are only so many years you can buy the mom in your life flowers or a gift card before you feel the obligation to try to think of something unique. 

Then you strike out trying to come up with anything new, and end up deciding to take her to an overpriced brunch where the overcrowded restaurant loses your reservation and by the time you sit down to eat your mom wishes that you would have just punched her in the face instead.

To make up for this inescapable annual failure, you try really hard to at least get a really entertaining Mother's Day card.  The problem is that there are also only three different Mother's Day cards in print.
 
Although this ratio matches up perfectly with the three available gift options for Mother's Day, it makes doing finding something truly unique about as likely as finding proper grammar in the comments section of an online newspaper article.

So inevitably, you buy a card telling your mom, or a loved one who is a mom, to take it easy on Mother's Day, knowing full well that the job description makes that impossible. Or you buy a card with a joke in it about how much better of a child you are than your siblings.  If you've bought these the last two years, you're stuck buying a card full of sentimental musings that you could have said to her directly for five dollars less.   

These limitations to Mother's Day creativity used to really stress me out.  This year, though, I have a whole new, stress-free outlook.  Want to know my secret?

It's simple: my mother will be on a cruise to Alaska on Sunday.  She'll be inaccessible by phone or to delivery persons, so she won't know what I tried to send her, or even whether I remembered to call.

While this is a perfect solution, if you're reading this blog instead of working right now, then there is a very good chance that you can't afford to send the mother in your life on a cruise this year.

So if she insists on remaining in the continental United States, you are left with three familiar choices: buy her one of the old standbys, take her out to eat, or figure out how to trade your mom in for mine. 

She's a lovely woman, and, more importantly, she already has all the flowers she needs.