Happy Birthday to Every Mom in the World!
Wow! It’s Mother’s Day once again and I’m so happy to celebrate the day my mom was born. From all the posts I see online, it seems like everyone else’s mom was also born today. This may be statistically impossible, but the universe can sometimes work in mysterious ways! I just can’t believe that every single mom was born all over the world on the same day. It’s really convenient that this is the case, since we can now, as children, celebrate all of the work our mothers have done for us while at the same time celebrating her own birth! Two celebrations in one day, it’s amazing!
You know what else is amazing? The fact that my mom is named Mom, but everyone else’s mom is also named Mom. Sure, there are some cultural/linguistic variations—for example, in the UK all moms are Mum and in Poland they are Mama—but it’s pretty cool that moms have a universal name for themselves. It makes it easy. There’s my mom, of course, and then there’s Cindy’s mom and Katie’s mom and Rebecca’s mom. Moms are everywhere!
But wait a second—where do moms come from? They’re obviously humans, because I came from a mom and I am a human but I was a baby at some point. That means that they were also babies at some point? That doesn’t make sense! Moms are moms. They were moms right off the jump, ready to be a parent to their kids. Just like Grandma was a mom to Mom. Mom had a grandma, who was Grandma’s mom. Mom was a kid at one point too…oh my god I’ve made a mistake.
Some moms may have known they wanted to be a mom early on, but they had to have been born a regular child and grew up into an adult. They must have been born on any old day, with any old name. Just like me, a current childless woman with a name. It turns out that my mom has lived a full life before I came into the picture. In fact, moms everywhere have been living full, actualized lives for around 20 to 40 years with their own names and birthdays!
I don’t know if I want to be a mom one day, but does that mean that I will also just become a Mom born on Mother’s Day just like every other mom? Wait, no—that would be ridiculous. My mom’s got a name just like every other person who eventually becomes a parent. I’m so stupid!! Her name is Teresa (from what I recall other people calling her) and her birthday is on September 24th and I’ve missed it every year since I was five. My dad would always say, “Hey, it’s your mom’s birthday today,” and then I would say back, “No it’s not! Her birthday is in May. On Mother’s Day. Just like yours is in June.” His birthday is actually in June, though. He would sigh a deep sigh and say, “Please, just sign the card.”
As a self-proclaimed feminist, today I learned that I am actually one of the most ignorant people alive, unable to see an extremely large group of people as nothing more than what they do for others. I am ashamed of myself. To be fair, NOBODY in the family has corrected me about this embarrassing misunderstanding for decades. Sorry to cut this short, I have to go make some calls, get a new card, and blow out all sixty-seven of these birthday candles.