Mother’s Day is coming up

The worst holiday of the year is coming up: Mother’s Day.

My family never really celebrated Mother’s or Father’s Day while I was growing up. My mom would get gifts for my grandparents, and fret over the gifts she chose, but that was the extent of it.

When we adopted our girls, they always wanted to make a big deal out of it. Not in a let us all have a nice day together, but to be perpetually angry if we did something or if we did nothing. There really was no “winning.”

They were never like this about Father’s Day.

The week leading up to the day, their attitudes shifted and they started slacking at school and home. Typically, I would ignore it knowing that they were having feelings. Sometimes I would try and acknowledge the feelings I knew they were having, but again there was no “winning.”

My partner usually drops the ball with things like holidays and birthdays, so I would be expected to provide some type of experience while actively being verbally abused by my children for about a week. I always made sure that we had all the therapy appointments scheduled around this time of year to let all the feelings get vented off somewhere in a more healthy manner.

After eight years, I never figured out a way to handle it where it was not a painful experience for all of us. Personally, I wanted to ignore that it even existed. They would demand something while being completely unwilling to enjoy anything. It was the hardest time of year to be an adoptive parent.

Eventually I would pick an outdoor activity and let my partner wrangle them while we were there and I would take out my camera and photograph nature. Once the day was over, everything always went back to the way things were before. The goal was to live through it and try not to put any expectations on that week.

This year, I already have plans. There were supposed to be four generations of women going to a show together, but now it is only three. On the one hand, I am grateful to have a more relaxing day. On the other hand, I really miss my kids. It is going to be a hard day for sure, but again the goal is to live through it and not have any expectations.