Happy Mothers.

(in photograph: my mom, Patricia, me (in pigtails), my sister Lynn and brother Gerald around 1971)

My wonderful sister Lynn does not send flowers to our mother on Mother's Day. Instead, she sends flowers on her own (my sister's) birthday, the day my mother became a mother for the first time. I think this is brilliant. You see, I consider Mother's Day to be an artificial holiday and I decided to find out how it all started. Get this:

In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament.

Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

When Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first Mother's Day service was celebrated on 10 May 1908. Anna chose Sunday to be Mother's Day because she intended the day to be commemorated and treated as a Holy Day. Later commercial and other exploitations of the use of Mothers Day infuriated Anna and she made her criticisms explicitly known throughout her time.

The holiday was declared officially by some states in 1912, beginning with West Virginia. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States

While I'm being negative, I may as well throw in some hypocrisy. Today I gladly slept in while my husband took the boys out for breakfast, was giddy to receive a gift certificate for a massage from them, went out to a nice lunch with my mother-in-law and called my own mother 2 times to wish her a Happy Mother's Day. Yes, I went through all the motions and I did it with sincerity. I'm a sincere negative hypocrite.

My point is, there is nothing I could say, do or give that would adequately celebrate and honor my mother. And no matter how much I love a good massage, there is nothing I could receive that would accurately reflect what being a mother means to me. How I feel about having and being a mother comes from the deepest, most sacred and tender place in me. On any given day you might find me up at the surface feeling over worked and under appreciated (I mean, seriously, how much laundry can a family of 4 generate??!), but that's ok. I chose this role and had never wanted anything more in my life. Nothing has caused me to step- up, stretch, work, think, love, be and become more than motherhood. I consider it my greatest service to the world and yet there's a good chance I'm getting much more than I'm giving.