No Signature Required

I've always been a little mystified by the public celebration of private events. Like wedding anniversaries. The wedding, of course, is this big public spectacle, an opportunity to re-engage with old friends, introduce them to your new friends, give work colleagues a glimpse into your personal life, and the best of all, showing your family how well liked you are - no loved! - by so many.  

But the anniversaries of that date...isn't that something you just want to celebrate with your spouse? Privately, with perhaps some champagne and the things you only be enjoyed without spectators? 

Why would you need more than the two of you involved? 

It seems like everything today needs an audience to make it matter. Everything needs to be lived out on Facebook, witnessed on 
Instagram, analyzed in 140 characters on Twitter. Needing hundreds (or thousands) of people sending good wishes to validate your importance. So it goes with Mother's Day. My inbox is full of requests to sign cards to Michelle Obama or Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton (who I actually do consider a friend) or other female politicians or famous types. Why? Are their leadership capabilities measured in how many people sign the card? Will their celebrations of motherhood (or grandmotherhood) be enhanced by all of these mostly anonymous well-wishers? Do they really need my signature on a computerized card to make their day complete?  

All of these marketing come-ons cause people to miss the whole point of the day. Does a mom really need anything more to celebrate the joys of motherhood beyond knowing she has children she loves and who love her? Isn't the fact of being a mother on Mother's Day special enough?  

I have a thing about this day of flowers and gifts. And cosmetics promotions and sales. It's a painful day for me. A national celebration of the hole in my life that comes from not being a mom. A day when even the doorman who alerts me to my solo food deliveries wishes me a Happy Mother's Day. A day I tend to spend under the covers surfing for reruns of The Devil Wears Prada, Dirty Dancing, or some other movie that conveys hopefulness and achievement without involving the heroine's uterus.  

One year I actually bought myself an "I'm-not-a-mother Day" gift. A ring that I wear every day. I love the ring, but it doesn't fill the hole and I've decided against making that my practice. Even diamonds can't outshine the dull ache in my heart that comes from my childlessness. 

I have tried to immunize myself against the new spasm of pain from each of the endless hawkers pushing mother’s day gifts, Facebook posts about the joys of motherhood, strangers wishing me Happy Mother’s Day, but have failed miserably. Now I just grit my teeth and rely on the inevitability of it ending in another day. Until next year. And avoid people as much as possible.

If I have one wish for this day, however, it’s that people start putting the emphasis on where it belongs, on their own relationships, and leave me out of it. 

And Michelle Obama? No, you don’t get my name on a card - or a contribution - from me today.