A solo Mother’s Day without the McKenzie clan
For the first time in several decades, I have no idea what I’m
doing for Mother’s Day.
Mother’s Day was always pretty cut and dried in times past. The
extended McKenzie clan would get together (siblings, spouses, kids,
etc.) and have brunch, which typically involved quiche, cinnamon
rolls, bagels, little sausages and fruit salad.
This usually takes place at my house, because I have a table
that can accommodate most of us, and folding chairs for the rest. I
also have a dog, which is a great source of entertainment for my
canine-less nieces and nephews, and leftover Legos from when my
boys were little.
A solo Mother’s Day without the McKenzie clan
For the first time in several decades, I have no idea what I’m doing for Mother’s Day.
Mother’s Day was always pretty cut and dried in times past. The extended McKenzie clan would get together (siblings, spouses, kids, etc.) and have brunch, which typically involved quiche, cinnamon rolls, bagels, little sausages and fruit salad.
This usually takes place at my house, because I have a table that can accommodate most of us, and folding chairs for the rest. I also have a dog, which is a great source of entertainment for my canine-less nieces and nephews, and leftover Legos from when my boys were little.
Besides which, have you ever tried to go out to eat on Mother’s Day? It’s usually a little crazy out there at the restaurants, not to mention expensive. That’s why we do brunch at my house.
The celebration usually includes scads of flowers and cards for my mother, seeing as she is the family matriarch. We all would eat, pass around the cards, admire the flowers, and then they’d all go home, and I would get to collapse for the rest of the day.
But none of that is going to happen, at least not this year. My mother has other plans.
“What do you mean, you’re going to San Francisco?” I asked her on the phone the other day, not quite believing what I’d just heard.
“We’re going to the symphony,” she said. Months ago, a friend of hers in the city had extended an invitation for the May 8 performance, and my parents had accepted, not realizing that it was on Mother’s Day.
“Wow,” I said. “Well, it sounds like fun.”
Which is all well and good – I’m not going to stop my mother from doing something she wants to do, not that I could stop her anyway. She’s a force of nature unto herself.
But it is a little bit weird to have a longtime pattern interrupted. No big family get-together, no brunch, no flowers, no cinnamon rolls. Weird.
That leaves me to the tender mercies of my own little nuclear family, which means that pretty much nothing will happen. I have wonderful boys, but they won’t plan much for me. I’ll be lucky if one of them actually remembers that Sunday is Mother’s Day.
Also, it’s entirely possible that my older son, having a serious girlfriend, may accompany her to her mother’s home for the day.
However, I am beginning to realize that there is an upside to all of this.
I will actually be able to do something on Mother’s Day that I want to do, not what someone else wants me to do. What a concept!
So now I just have to figure out exactly how I’d like to spend the day.
I would like to see my boys briefly, but it doesn’t have to be prolonged or drawn out. Some kind of meal at home would do just fine, topped off with a couple of hugs.
Then it’s on to whatever it is that I want. Which is still a bit up in the air.
Because I’m not used to having so much freedom about this kind of a choice.
Should I go on a garden tour? Go to the movies? Go skydiving? It’s hard to decide.
There is absolutely no need for me to do anything for anyone else, and I can do whatever I want to do – that’s something I haven’t had the opportunity to do in a very long time. Not since I was young and childless.
So it’s perplexing, but I am confident that I will figure it out by this Sunday. Wish me luck.
