You’ve been told. You’ve heard the expression: lower your expectations. You know instinctively there is wisdom in this phrase, but you don’t quite understand it. You don’t quite get what it means, exactly, to lower your expectations. You think they are pretty low already. All you want is to sleep in and to have a nap, both in the same day. I mean, isn’t that pretty low?
To be fair, this isn’t totally your fault. The word “lower” implies that you should still be permitted to cling to a few tiny expectations, however small, however insignificant, however easy to fulfill.
But in truth “lower” is a misnomer. It’s completely wrong.
I don’t want you to lower your expectations this Mother’s Day. I WANT YOU TO OBLITERATE THEM. Poof. Gone. No expectations whatsoever. Blow them to kingdom come.
Haha, you say.
Okay, I’ll obliterate my expectations, you say.
There! They’re gone, you say.
You’re wrong. I know you still have some harboured deep inside.
Why?
Because you’ve not been taught the true meaning of the word obliterate. You’ve seen too many Hallmark movies and M&M commercials. Unless you’ve literally been raised on a mountain in the woods you have been groomed by society and ad executives, through absolutely no fault of your own, to harbour expectations about Mother’s Day.
I know you because I was you.
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I have officially been a mother for the past five Mother’s Days, and the first three became progressively discouraging until the fourth blew up in my face, a magnificent explosion of shattered hopes and—trigger warning—expectations. It was one of my lowest days on this earth, full stop.
Why? Because I thought I had followed all the advice: Don’t expect them to read your mind; if you want something, tell them what it is. Don’t expect anything too grand; make your wishes small and attainable. Lower your expectations.
And I did. At least I thought I did. As a chronically exhausted mother of two small boys—four years and 18 months old, still nursing and co-sleeping, in other words miserable—all I wanted was to sleep in (defined here as not seeing or hearing my children or leaving my bed until 10:00 a.m.) and have a nap (alone in a bed in a dark room), both in the same day. These things are free, I rationalized, and this is one of two days in the year when I can reasonably ask for them without an inkling of guilt. I had been looking forward to it since my birthday in September, the last time I had slept in. So I asked for it. I made my request clear. I communicated like the boss I thought I was. The sleeping in and nap would be mine, and they would be glorious. (Do you hear the tone of expectancy here? Fatal mistake.)
In fact, it was my husband who slept in. Eventually when it was 8:30 and the children had been climbing on both of us in bed for two hours, I realized I wasn’t getting my wish. So I did the logical thing and threw the covers off in a rage and fumed about the house in the most terrible temper tantrum I’ve experienced in my adult life. I was miserable to my family for the next four hours. Later, exhausted by the morning of contention, my husband could bear it no longer. AND HE TOOK A NAP.
You can imagine how it went from there. Spoiler: it was the day I began using the F word in actual vocalized conversations and stopped feeling (too) bad about it.
See, my problem was that I thought—by asking for two things that require zero time, money, effort, or planning—that I had lowered my expectations. But in fact, I had doubled down on them. Because they were so simple, I left no room for the possibility that they could not be met. In other words, I expected the hell out of them.
Friends. Sisters. Don’t be like me.
Obliterate.
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This is what it looks like to obliterate your expectations about Mother’s Day:
Tomorrow when I awake to the shrieks of my children fighting in the next room, I will feel exhausted before I even open my eyes. When I do open them, I will see the same mess I saw the night before when I chose to go to bed instead of tidy up. The same piles of laundry and toys will litter the floor, discarded days ago and left to rot because I and my family lack the initiative to move them. I will not sleep in. I will not feel rested. I will not be catered to. There will be no breakfast, in bed or otherwise, unless I get up to make it. No bouquets. No cards. No chocolates. No wishes of a Happy Day. No smiles or feelings of familial goodwill. There will be no special songs; my children will refuse to sing on the stand at church, if I can even drag us there at all. I will not receive a card, handwritten or store bought or printed by a florist. I will not have brunch, lunch, or dinner, unless I make it myself or go out and buy it. No back rubs, no foot rubs, no coupons, no spa days, no facials, no manis or pedis, no weekends away, no tickets to NYC. No tubes of chapstick. No kisses on cheeks. No I Love Yous.
No phone calls, no emails, no nothing.
Also, I will scrub toilets and my children will tell me they hate me.
That is how you obliterate your expectations for Mother’s Day.
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I learned an important lesson from MothersGate 2017, and it has changed my entire outlook on the holiday ever since. So I’m here today on the eve of this, the most guilt-inducing of all holidays, to teach you a valuable lesson in self actualization. Pay attention:
Mother’s Day is not a holiday for husbands to honour their wives. Some of them do. Most of them won’t. Do NOT fall into the trap of thinking that yours will. He won’t. HE. WON’T.
And what’s more, he SHOULDN’T HAVE TO. If he does anything for anyone this Mother’s Day, it should be for his own personal mother/mother figure. If he chooses not to, THAT IS 100% ON HIM AND HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS MOTHER/MOTHER FIGURE.
The good news about this is, for once in your GD life, you can skip the guilt about it. If your husband/partner/spouse/significant other fails to honour his or her own mother on Mother’s Day, do you know whose fault it is?
HIS MOTHER’S! She didn’t teach him that he should. (Or maybe she never cared, which is better still because it explains why he never does anything for you—his mother learned early on to obliterate her own expectations.)
Or if you don’t think your mother in law deserves this blame, either because she really doesn’t or because you’re a feminist and don’t feel right about shaming her, take the higher route and blame HIM! IT IS HIS FAULT! He’s a grown ass man! If he is forgetful, that’s fine: you can remind him that it’s Mother’s Day. It’s the civil thing to do. But then—and this is the important part—STOP. It is up to him to pick up the phone and make the call. (If you love your partner’s mother, it would be a nice gesture to call her yourself as well. That is something you *can* control.)
Isn’t this a wonderful feeling? Doesn’t it relieve so much pressure on you?
Now you don’t have to keep hating your life every time Mother’s Day rolls around and disappoints you.
In fact, with this new knowledge Mother’s Day should never disappoint you again.
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Going forward, if your obliterated expectations depress you and make you sad, here is something you CAN control, if you want: you can teach your children to value Mother’s Day. You can tell them what it’s about, when it’s coming up, why it’s even a thing, who it is for, and what we can do to honour the women we love. You can sit with them and endure hours upon tedious hours while they painstakingly make hand-drawn cards for everyone they want to thank. Or you can take them to the store to pick out cards with them. You can include them in the baking of cookies, or the taking of photos, or the writing of poems, or whatever it is you believe that you should do to honour your mother or mother figure(s) on this special day.
And then, maybe someday without prompting or nagging or any motivation besides the sheer love they have in their heart for a woman who has raised them and raised them well, they might surprise you with an extra hour of sleep or a terrible breakfast in bed.
But remember: don’t ever, ever count on it.
Have a Mother’s Day.