Dear Greeting Card Companies

Dear greeting card companies,

Mother’s Day is supposed to be a celebration of our mothers.  Instead, for me, each year is a study in angst inspired in large part by your total ignorance of a variety of mothers, mothering styles, and family compositions. 

First of all, I have multiple mothers.  They know about each other.  Even if they didn’t know about each other, I wouldn’t send a card that said “you’re the best mother in the world” because I don’t play favorites.  I appreciate each of them for the contribution they made, and continue to make, to my life.

Second, the contribution they made to my life was not a permanent role in it.  The cards that actually detail the ways in which mothers are important inevitably assume that she has always been there.  Yet mine couldn’t always be a part of my life because my father wouldn’t let them.  It would be immeasurably cruel to send any of them a card that says anything about always being there, supporting me throughout my life, watching me grow through all of the stages of childhood, etc.  That would be like punishing them for my far-from-perfect family .  A mother doesn’t have to be there at every moment to be worthy of celebration on this designated day.

For this same reason, I despise the cards that say “you’re my best friend.”  My mothers aren’t – we just aren’t that close – and they don’t need to be anyway to still be a vital element in my life.  My mothers were mothers to me, not friends, and mothering doesn’t require friendship to be significant.  Also, at this point at least, the idea of friendship with them seems presumptuous.

That doesn’t leave me much. 

That leaves cutesy, “feminine” pap like “All we want is peace on earth and cute shoes.”   There is far more to my, and my mothers’, lives than cute shoes.

There are further details that I must use that narrow down my choices even further, if I am going to be true to the relationship I have with my individual mothers.

And ultimately, I am left with not much.  The only cards that work for me, after all of these considerations, are bland and generic.  For someone who loves to give funny cards or something with a little more personality, especially, the options are too limited for my taste.  I can’t imagine I’m the only one, either, considering contemporary trends in families .

It’s sad that there seem to be only about 4 kinds of cards available for Mother’s Day when there are so many different mothers in the world.  We can’t all squeeze our mothers into these boxes, and many of us wouldn’t want to.  Of course there is a limit on how personalized a store-bought card can be, but if we judged American mothers by the selection of Mother’s Day cards in the Hallmark aisle, we might come away thinking that motherhood is a very limited and limiting role to play.

Next year, I am making my own cards.  At least then I know that they will get something that applies to the most basic standards of my mother-daughter relationships.

In other words, until you can drag yourself into the 21st Century, you won’t get any more of my money.

Sincerely,
wax_ghost

(Cross-posted at What If )