Mother's Day

Mother's Day is one of those problematic days that sounds completely nice, but is packed full of opportunities for disappointment or hurt.  When you're dealing with a kiddo that is experiencing separation from their biological mother, the pain of having a day to celebrate mothers can be pretty overwhelming.  Add to that the emphasis that well-meaning, but uninformed folks place on that relationship, and it is a day rife for tears and anger. 

I don't know that all of our foster daughter's anger and outrage over the last few weeks can be directly attributed to Mother's Day preparations, but it's likely that the activities they were doing at school in preparation kept the separation from her family fresh in her mind.  There was a tea party in her kindergarten class where moms (the invitation at least also specified it could also be a mom "stand-in") were invited to the school to be celebrated by the kids.  Unfortunately, I just started a new job so I wasn't able to make it, but my sister-in-law kindly stepped in so that our foster daughter would have someone that was there just for her.  And the kids made books all about various things that their moms did.  Our foster daughter navigated this activity beautifully - some of the pages were about her biological mother, and some were about me.  I thought it was really sweet to see how she valued both of these relationships, but I can only imagine how hard it was for her to have to think about both her moms each time she worked on this activity. 

Growing up in a stable, two-parent family, this seems like a really cute activity.  But my perspective has changed.  A stable, two-parent household can no longer be assumed for better or worse.  Yes, there's the situation we're in, where we are temporarily raising someone else's child.  But there are so many other ways that children have experienced painful loss related to a parent.  Divorce, death, instability of the relationship, being raised in a gay or lesbian household without both a mother and a father... and I'm sure there are many others that I'm not thinking of.  The point is that days like Mother's Day emphasize to these kiddos what they have lost, or in some cases, what they never had.  And while some are able to focus more on the positives of having a positive mom-figure in their lives, or loving a mom that is no longer with them, that's a whole heck of a lot to ask of a six-year-old. 

So we didn't really celebrate Mother's Day at our house.  We made cakes from the strawberries we picked the day before and played in the rain.  My husband helped out by keeping the dishes washed.  We just tried to have a nice, normal, relaxing day.  At some point, my husband told me I had handled the day's challenges well.  And that was about it.