ON this day the only thing more ubiquitous than satisfied florists and purveyors of I-heart-Mom coffee cups will be praise songs. Today, everyone and, indeed, their mother will write. We will go all poetic and gushy on Facebook and post pictures of ma, grandma, aunty and nennen. The socials will sparkle with mummy-loving messages and reminiscences.
Stationery stores that sit empty for most of the year will be plundered so we can sign our names to sentiments someone else wrote.
Makes you wish Mother's Day had never been invented. Even the woman credited with making it an official day of honouring the work and dedication of mothers in America, Anna Maria Jarvis, wanted to take it back when she saw the circus it became.
Her idea was just to have one day when you'd wear a white carnation as a symbol to mark the great sacrifices made by the woman who birthed you.
She also thought holidays were a bit heavy on celebrating men and things needed a bit of balance.
Her own mother, Anne Marie Reeves Jarvis, was a social activist of such vigour it's amazing she had time to have children, let alone care for them. I love their names - mother and daughter. Shows that whole passing-the-name-through-generations thing is not just for the boys. Whether it's vanity or respect, women were doing it ages ago.
But poor daughter-Jarvis. And she was poor. All around her, her fine ideals went to hell in a handcart, and candy-makers, bakers, florists, they all prospered. Mother's Day was well on its way to being the commercial superpower it is today, and, poor soul, she was alive to see it.
She never wed or mothered, so when she got old and sick and still poor, her care (you can't make this stuff up) was paid for by people in the stationery and confectionery trade.
The horror. The horror.
Which leads us to punctuation. For truly, there is no greater menace.
I have a problem with the name Mother's Day. The apostrophe that makes it singular that is the source of my discontent. Daughter-Jarvis was very clear about this one-mother apostrophe: you should be celebrating your one and only mother.
I'm not good with that. Maybe her misfortune of not being a West Indian person deprived her of the history, experience or feel-it-in-your-bonesness that lets you know you are likely to be mothered by any number of people. One of the things I loved about West Indian literature, especially when I was a child, was this world of community family.
It showed me a world that was at once full of freedom, yet safe. Love and discipline were shared equally.
I was not part of that world so being able to find it - the way I found almost everything - in books, held me, and helped me to understand a much, much bigger world. One that would have made me a sorry excuse for a daughter of this country if I failed to grasp its importance.
I cannot reconcile myself with this glorifying of one mother. And that's really saying something, because give me two minutes of your time and I'll start telling you about my long-deceased mother as though she migh
