Historically, Mother’s Days have felt like the longest days of my life. I love my wife; she is a great mom to my children, and I want to show her how much I appreciate her by doing wonderful and thoughtful things for her on Mother’s Day. But, it’s just that Mother’s Day is an “all day” affair. I think I could handle something more realistic like “Mother’s Morning.” I know it sounds like a terrible thing to say, but the truth is those days just feel like they take forever, as if the clocked stopped working.
My wife certainly deserves a day each year when she doesn’t have to cook and clean up after her sloppy husband and two kids. The rug rats and I want to give her a great day where we show her our appreciation. But the kids and I only have about 2 1/2 hours of giving into mom’s every wish and whim before we peter out. By 10:30 a.m., one of the kids will slip up and ask, “Hey Mom, what are you making for lunch?”
I blame my wife for this. She spoils us year round with all the good cooking and the loving and nurturing. We don’t know how to do stuff without her. We can’t feed ourselves or buy things like food. We don’t know how to wrap presents. One year, my kids asked if their mom could wrap her own birthday present “without peeking at it.”
This Mother’s Day was no different. We wanted to do something nice for Mom, but in the end it was a total disaster. The day started off solid (we are always good at the Mother’s Morning). We let her sleep in. We left her completely alone. Nobody asked her to do any laundry. Nobody woke her up with an important question that only she could answer, like, “Are we out of milk?” This year, we actually looked in the fridge ourselves to realize that we were indeed out of milk. We did sort of wake her up to ask her where the car keys were, because we were going to the store to get that milk. She didn’t seem too happy about that question.
At 10:31 a.m., we asked my wife what she wanted to do for Mother’s Day. She requested that we take her to the movies to see The Avengers. Her request was based on two reasons: 1. She is a big nerd and she loves the film’s director, Joss Whedon, and 2. She loves Thor, especially when his shirt is off, which it always seems to be. But that wasn’t all she wanted for Mother’s Day. One of the stipulations about taking her to this movie was that we didn’t make fun of her for being a geeky Joss Whedon fan (he directed her favorite show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which begs to be made fun of).
The other stipulation about going to the movies was that we wouldn’t buy exorbitantly priced candy at the theater. My wife, whom I love, still wanted her candy while she watched Thor take off his shirt, she just didn’t want to pay $40 for it. Instead, we went to 7-11 first, picked up some sugary, yummy good stuff for $6, and then used our children like drug mules to smuggle the illegal candy into the movie theater: “Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. Here is a Charleston Chew I smuggled into the theater for you.”
We arrived 10 minutes early, which turned out to be 20 minutes late as we learned there is a world of geeky Joss Whedon fans out there, and they were all at the 12:30 p.m. showing of The Avengers. We bought our tickets and then bought some overpriced, oversized Cherry Cokes (my wife hasn’t found a way to smuggle 64 ounces of Cherry Coke in her purse). We each got our own monster-sized Coke (a total of $36 spent), and we headed into the theater to kill a solid two hours, at least, of Mother’s Day.
Except we didn’t. As soon as we stepped into the theater and saw how packed it was, my wife spun around and said, “Oh, hell no. I didn’t pay $60 to sit in the front row! We’re going to talk to the manager, get a rain check, and come back some other time.”
Uh oh. My wife was on the warpath. Instantly I began to feel sorry for the poor manager for what was coming his way. The kids and I knew not to argue about staying to see the movie; we just got out of Mom’s way and followed her out of the theater like baby ducks following the momma duck. I’ll admit we did try to distance ourselves from her while she railed against the manager. We wanted to keep a low profile since our pants were full of candy contraband. My wife told the manager that it was “unacceptable that the theater was completely full” and that she wanted “a rain check for a different movie time.” She also demanded that when she comes back they refill her “$9 worth of 64 ounces of Cherry Coke!” The manager, trying to avoid a hostage situation, agreed to all the terms, and sent us on our way with tickets for the 3 o’clock show.
We walked out of the theater, clumsily holding massive Cherry Cokes, our pants still stuffed with candy. The candy and jumbo Cokes seemed quite out of place while standing in the theater parking lot with 2 1/2 hours to kill. I was trying to think of something nice we could do on Mother’s Day for two hours before we had to come back. Nothing was coming to me. Then my daughter asked, “Mom, what are we doing for lunch?”
After pretending not to know her in the theater, Rob’s wife told him he’d be lucky to get “Father’s Fifteen Minutes” next Father’s Day.
This article appears in May 24-31, 2012.
