Are You In There, Mom?

By TAD BARTIMUS

When we were six, Mom treasured our crayon drawings proudly wrapped up for Mother's day. When we were teenagers, she was thrilled when we served her cold cereal in bed before we dashed off to the Mall. Now – all grown up, with kids and lives of our own -- we observe the holiday with e-commerce flowers and long-distance calls or, if we're nearby, a corsage and a nice restaurant meal. We give her a new toaster or practical bedroom slippers, let her keep the bow and get her back home in time for the evening news.

Our mothers are effusively grateful for our Mother's Day attention; we, in turn get to feel extravagant and magnanimous for giving up a Sunday. It seems like a fair trade.

It isn't.

The restaurateur, the florist, the phone company and the greeting card store get what they want for Mother's Day.

We get to say, "See, this is a very expensive restaurant I'm taking you to, aren't I doing well in the world? Aren't I appropriately grateful for what you did for me? Don't you see that I love you?" Any mother worth her charm bracelet knows to pat Sonny or Sister on the head and say, "Thank you, dear, well done, I love you, too!"

Mom's gratitude is obvious. What isn't so clear is how she would have chosen to spend her special day if we'd had taken the time to ask her.

Only now that my mother is gone do I have a glimmer of who she was besides being my mother. What did she stand for? What did she need – what did she want? -- out of life? I am now the age she was when she ever-so-briefly questioned such things during one of my infrequent visits. I'm ashamed to say I don't remember the throwaway line I must have tossed her – "Oh Mom, you're fine, don't worry about it!" – but it was crass enough to squelch any future mother-to-daughter angst about her inner self. It's my loss.

Now, by watching and listening to my contemporaries, I realize their offspring are just like I was at their age; they don't have a clue about who their mothers are beyond their cooking-cleaning-carpooling-working Mom image. Too bad.

Children believe the world revolves around them ("enough about you, let's talk about me!"). Oblivion about parents as people is endemic to youth, so I certainly wasn't alone in failing to see beyond my own looking glass. Unfortunately, I didn't figure this out until I became a middle-aged orphan, too late to ask the right questions and marvel at the answers.

A recent survey claims that more women today would rather have a hot bath than sex. This doesn't surprise me; a bath doesn't take effort or energy. Even adults without children know there's little time to sit quietly and read a book, spend an idle hour in a department store, stroll through a park or do anything without a mission. We all snatch quiet time either before our households erupt in routine or after everybody else has gone to bed.

"Honestly," said a friend, "I don't even have time to talk to God because He doesn't have a cell phone." She was only half kidding.

I now know that women long to step outside themselves once in while, to re-visit the person they were before they became someone's wife, someone's mother, someone's employee or boss. I'm sure my own mother felt the same way, but I was too self-absorbed to realize she would have unmet dreams and needs. I'm sure I thought that once she became a Mom she outgrew all that stuff.

As long as our mothers are with us, it's never too late to set aside Mother's Day – and a lot of other days – as a day for mother. If I could do it over again I would ask, straight out: "Mom, what would you like to do on May 14?" And June 18, and September 5, and November 9…etc., etc.

Maybe she would have answered: "Get a toaster, pin on a corsage and go out to lunch."

But I doubt it.

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