Mother's Day

I’ve never felt particularly attached to Mother’s Day. I ‘m not overtly opposed to it as a “Hallmark holiday,” the way some people are, but I just never take it very seriously. When I was growing up, my parents paid very little attention to holidays like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day; my earliest memories of celebrating either of those holidays was one year when June was a particularly hot month and my older sister decided the best way to honor Dad was for the three daughters to choreograph a swim show in his honor. This became yearly tradition, both the part in which the three of us planned out and performed our water ballet and the part in which my father said “The best Father’s Day gift would be not to have to watch a swim show.” To this day, my sister calls me a few days before Father’s Day from wherever she happens to be – an academic retreat in Italy, this particular year – to ask if I’m done choreographing our show yet. (My sister also reminds me periodically of her expectation that I will help her choreograph a swim show for Independence Day, Labor Day, and the occasional unseasonably warm Columbus Day.)

This past Sunday, there were no swim shows, but we did have a simple brunch with my parents in their new screen house, which is just about the right size to hold the four of us, the two of them, and the dog. (Admittedly, we all would have fit even better without the dog, but I didn’t want to spend the remainder of Mother’s Day searching for her in the woods. Or removing ticks from her fur.)

And somehow it just felt festive in unusual ways, far different from the usual bouquets-and-breakfast-in-bed (neither of which have I ever actually experienced on Mother’s Day, but that’s what I’ve seen on TV commercials). From Rick, I received the gift I most wanted on that particular day: he did a spring tune-up on all four of our bikes, didn’t complain about the task, didn’t ask me for any help, and cleaned the whole project up when he was done. From Holly, a homemade necklace in a homemade jewelry box. From Tim, plenty of good cheer and affection.

At Tim’s afternoon baseball game, all the mothers wished each other a happy Mother’s Day, and all the fathers who were present wished us one as well. At the restaurant where we ate with my in-laws after the game, there were complimentary chocolate-dipped strawberries served after dinner “in honor of mothers.” There was even a balloon sculpture artist at the restaurant who was specifically targeting the mothers in the room for his patter and antics; mercifully, some very swift bill-paying by Rick enabled us to escape before he reached our table.

Mother’s Day still isn’t high on my list of important holidays, but this year it was more fun than I remembered, with baseball and strawberries and bike tune-ups done without asking. Too cold for swim shows this year, I’m afraid. But I suppose with the current rate of global warming, it’s not out of the question for next.

Our eclectic yearly cookie swap

I inherited the guest list for the yearly cookie swap from my friend Lisa.

One November evening four years ago, she invited me to a get-together at her house. “It’s a group that meets monthly to have dinner or watch a movie or do some kind of activity,” she said. “It’s mostly mothers of kids in Nate’s class at the Montessori Preschool, but you can come too if you want.”

I did go to Lisa’s that evening. I forget what the theme that month was, but there were about twenty women in attendance; I already knew some of them and enjoyed meeting the rest. In fact, I had such a good time that I rather rashly offered to host the same group the following month for something I’d long wanted to try: a holiday cookie swap, in which each guest brings a few dozen cookies to exchange, and each participant leaves with a cookie assortment that she can serve at other gatherings or give as gifts over the upcoming weeks of festivities.

In what I hope was a coincidence unrelated to my presence at the event, the group’s monthly habit started to fall apart right around then. I was invited to a couple more events in the months that followed, but for the most part the routine seemed to peter out at that point.

Nonetheless, I’d had fun at the cookie exchange and wanted to host one again the following year. By the third year, I realized that if the original group was no longer meeting regularly, I wasn’t really tied to that specific list of people and could invite whoever I wanted, but I was actually fond of that particular group. I had lots of good friends who weren’t part of it, but I could see them at other events throughout the year.

So once again, last night, it was a cookie exchange primarily for my inherited guest list, though over the years I’ve expanded it a little bit, mostly to include new acquaintances in town, because it’s such a good opportunity for them to meet other mothers of grade school aged children.

Now it’s a yearly ritual on a weeknight in early December. We go through bottles of seltzer or wine (a couple of guests always rib me about how small my wine glasses are, and every year I promise to try to upgrade my collection by the next December); we eat cheese and crackers and dips and vegetables and my friend Emily’s addictive cream cheese chutney spread; I indulge in my love of making decadent desserts – eggnog cheesecake and chocolate mousse pie, this year – and  everyone arrives with cookies, which we array on the dining room table.

My husband Rick always jokes that we need to ramp it up, make it more competitive. He claims not to like the fact that we simply take the number of cookies allotted to each guest; he thinks it should be more like the NFL draft, with rankings and deal-making and competitive bidding. But we haven’t reached that point yet. It’s just fun to see what everyone brought. Last night there were red velvet cookies, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, maple pecan cookies, toffee, biscotti, peppermint bark. The variety goes on and on, but no one takes it too seriously. It’s really just a chance to get together, and leaving with a bundle of cookies is a bonus (with the added benefit that no one’s spouse or children are ever sorry to see them head out the door when cookie exchange night arrives).

Last night, I realized that inheriting a guest list rather than making one up yourself can actually be an advantage. Though we are all local, there are some guests whom I go a whole year without seeing in between cookie exchanges, which is much longer than I go without seeing closer friends. Besides, there’s something about this list that reminds me of the cookie exchange itself. With their children’s preschool days long behind them, even Lisa’s original group of guests doesn’t all see each other that much anymore. We’re a somewhat random collection of people clustered together for this one evening like varied cookies on a plate. And just like the cookies we’re all left with every year, it’s a wonderful assortment, perfect for the holiday season.