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I went shopping for Mother’s Day cards and was surprised at how many random thoughts it inspired. I spent so much time in the card aisle that I’m surprised security didn’t come check on me.

I tried to avoid seeing the cards for grandmothers but I couldn’t. It was hard to shake the sadness that I no longer have anyone to give them to. It was also hard to shake the guilt over all the years that I still had someone to send them to, but did not.

As I chose a card for my stepmother I hoped that I would not forget to send one to my dad on Father’s Day like I often do. Some years I’ve forgotten to get Mother’s Day cards mailed and some years I’ve forgotten to get Father’s Day cards mailed. I hate it when that happens. I’m always afraid one of them will feel slighted, unloved and unappreciated. Forgotten. I also remembered the year that I found all the Christmas cards addressed, stamped, and under a car seat still not mailed. In February. I don’t forget people. I forget the post office. Really.

I thought about my Aunt Jean who has no children and how I’d like to send her a Mother’s Day card anyway because she has meant a lot to me in my life, and like my grandmothers will not always be there to send a card to. When I was a child, she sent cards and postcards all the time. If there is an Aunt’s Day, I am not aware of it. I opted not to buy one for her but I think I may go back and get one.

Which reminds me of my friend Rachael in Florida, who I have never met in person, and probably never will. Rachael will send me a Mother’s Day card this year. My own kids probably won’t. My husband probably won’t. But Rachael will. I can count on it. I can also count on her to send my kids birthday cards, Easter cards, Halloween cards, and little surprise gifts in the mail. She even made my daughter some jewelry and mailed it. I appreciate Rachael and her thoughtfulness and wish I were half as good a friend as she is. I’ve remembered to mail her son something once. Maybe twice.

I met Rachael on an MSN Group. I’m not very active there any more. I should be, but I’m not. I need to change that but there are only so many hours in a day. My excuse is that I really want to write seriously this year and Gather is the better place to practice that. But my excuse sounds empty. These women are my friends and I have neglected them. So I will send them Mother’s Day cards this year. I wish I could buy them by the box like Christmas cards.

Other friends from that MSN Group come to mind. Karel. I hope she knows how much I value her. I wish she were here. She writes short stories and they are good. She is here, but like Rachael, only to occasionally read my stuff. She isn’t here in the same way that I’m here.

Stephanie. She died on Mother’s Day. She was 29 years old. She had four little boys. One of them was still breastfeeding when she died. There will never be another Mother’s Day when I don’t think of her and wonder how her boys are. She was the kind of mother that I wish I was but never will be.

Then there are my Gather friends. Unlike MSN, I don’t have very many snail mail addresses. I worry that if I send a card to Friend A and not to Friend B, just because I have one address and not the other, if Friend B will find out and feel slighted. I wonder if Friend C should get a card even though she doesn’t have any kids just because I love her just as much as Friend A and have her address.

Thankfully, in the midst of all this worry, I remember not to forget my own mother. I don’t buy mushy, sentimental cards for my mother. It just doesn’t work. I grew up laughing and learned my sarcasm from the best. Flowery cards full of poetry seem like something we’d have made fun of back in the day. Feelings by Hallmark seem somehow cheap and insincere. Better to buy a funny card and tell her I love her in my own words than to buy words written by someone else. But what if I’m wrong and she’s spent her whole life waiting to get a mushy, sentimental card? I certainly can’t write that fluff myself.

I buy cards for my sisters. One sister I talk to almost every day. The other sister I see about once every other year. I don’t buy them the same card.

I wonder if I should buy a card for my mother-in-law or if I should expect her son, my husband, to do it. He will probably forget or wait until they are so picked over that we have to make our own. I better go back and buy her one.

The Tale of the Quarter:

I had a bad day with my four year old son a few weeks ago. We had dropped my daughter off at her reading tutor and were on the way home. Since we were driving by Aldi I decided to stop and get a spiral ham.

If you aren’t familiar with Aldi there are two things to know. First, a person can’t spend much time shopping there. There is only one brand of anything so you don’t spend any time comparing prices or deciding what brand to buy. I can get a cart full of food in twenty minutes. My son was not going to have to suffer long. We’re not talking Wal-Mart the week before Christmas.

Second, you have to have a quarter to get a shopping cart. You get your quarter back when you return your cart. This way they aren’t paying anyone to round up carts. Because you have to have a quarter to shop at Aldi and because I frequently stop at Aldi, I keep a special Aldi quarter in a special section of my wallet. The Aldi quarter does not get spent. It is always there when I need it. My Aldi quarter had been with me longer than my son has. Key word is had.

Once inside Aldi we found a wooden train set on display. They often have special buys on toys during the holidays and this was one of them. My son decided he wanted to play with the train display only to discover that they had glued all the trains and things down. I don’t blame them. However, this discovery triggered the worst public temper tantrum I have ever seen in my life, from my child or anyone else’s. I had no choice. I had to abandon my cart and haul a kicking, screaming, cursing child out of Aldi.

My Aldi quarter was gone. Left behind in my abandoned cart. I grieved for my lost Aldi quarter. I thought about going back to see if I could recover it. I haven’t been back to Aldi since. Not because I’m embarrassed, but because my quarter is gone. My husband doesn’t get it. He thinks any quarter will do.

The Tale of the Nickel:

Today my daughter and I went to the library. They have a little gift shop in the library. She purchased four pieces of nickel candy. I gave her a quarter to pay for it. She asked if she could keep the nickel she got back in change.

Our next stop was K-Mart so that she could pick up a Christmas gift for her brother. There was a bell ringer at the door. She said, “Oh, no! I forgot my money!” and turned around and ran all the way back to the car to get that nickel for the bell ringer. Let me just say we weren’t parked near the door. It is Christmas time.

I know a nickel isn’t much but it was all the money she possessed and she ran all the way to the car and back to get it for that bell ringer. I was proud of her.

Is there a moral to this? I doubt it. I was just thinking of my shame and anger with the quarter and my pride with the nickel and all the ups and downs of motherhood.

originally published on Gather on 12-20-07