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Intrigued
Is it simply circumstance, or is Mother's Day getting that extra push this year? I can't tell if I'm getting so many more junk emails asking me to purchase "gifts for mom" because of the crummy economy or if something about this year is making everyone cling to the holiday.
For my part, as I think I've probably mentioned before, I don't come from a family of ardent Mother's Day celebrators, so the pressure is off a bit. I am a little eager to see what is in the carefully tissue-wrapped, cellophane-bagged package that was handed to me at Felix's school with the admonition not to open it before Sunday. (I am also sincerely hoping I got it home in one piece... whatever it may be.) And I think that part of my reluctance to be highly celebratory is that with all of the praise and coddling comes (for me, but I am weird this way and I know it) some reckoning where I keep wondering, Ed Koch like, how I'm doing.
And I worry that in recent days, my scores on the domestic front are kind of low. I figure I've done all right by the kids but in the inevitable effort not to repeat past mistakes, my husband and I have decided to get a little electrical work done on the apartment before we are too scared to do it. (Also, there wasn't much in the way of lights hooked up so it was pretty necessary.) We are currently in that ugly in-between stage where everything is wrapped up in "protection" and my neighbors hate me for the noise and the dog is so upset that to ease his angst and reduce my neighbors' ire and my blood pressure, I have had to ask my own parents to take care of him. These are not my finest hours.
So it is with this eye that I wonder at all the books coming out, like Ayelet Waldman's essay collection Bad Mother (no, I haven't read it) and Elizabeth Edwards's book and confessional tour (which I also have only read about-- didn't catch her Oprah appearance). I take it that I'm not alone in feeling like a bit of a fraud on Mother's Day, while not quite being a "bad mother."
In other news or "news" I did see a curious baby naming article this week, and I must say that I have not seen this new trend of babies named Cohen (but I live in New York City where so many people have the last name Cohen that it would seem unimaginative and possibly redundant). It is apparently a very controvertial choice (a bit surprising to me). Also surprising is the fact that the initial inspiration for the trend came from a character called Seth Cohen on the television series The O.C., which ran until 2007 (never watched that either). I missed it, but was this show amazing? Was this Seth guy something else? I ask because I wasn't really that aware of much naming kids after characters beyond the flood of Laras inspired by Doctor Zhivago. Is this a thing? I understand being somewhat susceptible to actor's names but characters last names? The mind reels. Of course one could go with something relatively normal like Clayton (from Michael Clayton) but what if you really loved The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (as I do)? Kockenlocker. The name doesn't exactly trip off the tongue.
Happy Mother's Day.
posted by Elise at 3:58 AM
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said...
Mother's Day (unlike Father's Day, which floats my boat), is the most difficult of "holidays" for me, even now that my two grown sons no longer take me for granted and want to celebrate "my day" (horrors), especially because everyone is wishing me and every other woman (regardless of whether or not she has offspring) a "Happy Mother's Day!" The indiscriminate encomiums (when I know better) to my excellence at motherhood make me feel like a fraud too. Happily, my boys knows better than to invite me to some dreadful brunch tomorrow and to let me read the Sunday Times to well into the afternoon and look forward to Monday not being Mother's Day. But let me say to you in particular that I wish you a good day with your boys and your husband.
5/09/2009 5:04 PM
gef said...
i too read that article about the cohen-naming trend and am equally flummoxed by it. where i live the important-sounding surname-as-first-name trend for baby boys is v. major but i've yet to hear cohen. i saw the oc and appreciated seth cohen (in my capacity as a teen-magazine editor, of course) but i can't believe that more than a scant handful of (very young!) mothers are naming their sons for that cute, neurotic fellow.
5/13/2009 8:09 PM
Becky said...
Both of you appear to me to be mothers of young children. Having early on in the '80's withstood, defended and explained ad nauseum to family and non-family members alike questions about why (without any family antecedents) I named my boys Oliver and Gabriel ("you must have meant 'Ollie' and 'Gabe, right'?" was always the final retort and the final reply was always no), I long ago became supremely indifferent to the origins of somebody's name. I'm even inclined to name my next cat Alfredo (after the male lead in Verdi's "La Traviata,", a favorite opera of mine) and I expect to be bombarded with inquiries, in response to which I hope to burst out into song with one of Violetta's famous arias (for which I beg your dispensation).
5/16/2009 7:57 PM
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