It
was  Mother's Day in May, 1947, and I was 11 years old. As usual my
parents got into a fight over the weekend when my father got home on
Friday after being 'on the road' for 2 weeks. It had been quiet until
Saturday when something, who knows what, triggered off the argument. The
pattern was he would storm out and usually go to a movie, or so he
said, and returning when my mother was asleep or feigned being asleep.

Early Sunday morning I heard my
father tell me mother that he was going into the office and would be
back later to take us out for a movie at the Loew's Paradise and then go
for a bite to eat. Immediately after he left I jumped out of bed and
walked up to the Lydig Avenue flower shop and bought my mother flowers
with the money I had been saving for this occasion .

Mother and son

When
I came home I walked upstairs to her bedroom and listening at the
closed door I could hear her weeping. I knocked on the door and when she
said, "Come in," I did handing her the dozen red roses and saying,
"Happy Mother's Day." She hadn't gotten out of bed and had been crying since my father had left.

Without
a seconds hesitation she threw the flowers at me and shouted, "I am not
a mother one day a year! You can tell that to your father also!" I
didn't say a word, and with tears falling on my cheeks though I was
doing everything I could not to cry, I picked up the flowers, the petals
that were all over the floor, and left the bedroom. I went downstairs, 
outside, and threw the the roses, with most of their petals gone and
the stems broken, into the garbage can.

I
don't remember the rest of that day but, if it was like any other
weekend my father was home, we probably went to the movie and then to a
Chinese restaurant, back home, with my parents silent all the time while
my brother and I squirmed uncomfortably until we could get back to our
room and close the door.

To
this day I remember the effects of that day on me from the beginning of
the disdain, and hurt, I would develop towards my mother and realizing
that my father wasn't the hero I worshipped anymore. A 'funny' thing
from that day that I remember is my father ordering 1/2 orange sherbet
and 1/2 vanilla ice cream for the dessert in the restaurant. Amazing
what the mind retains.

I
never, ever bought my mother another gift and, I am sure psychiatrists
could/would have a ball with this, I love getting cut flowers as a gift.

I
never forgot that 'incident' and it took me many years to forgive her
but then it took me many years, and therapy, to learn that they were
just people and people make mistakes, do stupid and hurtful things,
sometimes without thinking. Every Mother's Day, for a minute, I see me
standing by her bed and her throwing flowers at me before I forget it
for another year.

I
am not aware if parents know the profound effect they have on their
children whether it be a word and/or gesture and how long lasting it can
be.

My
mother died a divorced woman, estranged from her children and her
grandchildren who were not allowed to see her. Sadly the more she had to
complain/cry about the happier she was and that is not a way for a
person to live.

A
mother is a mother every day of the year and should be treated as such
but the mother has to realize that a child is a child every day and has
to be loved every day.

******************************************************************

"We don't receive wisdom,

we must discover it for ourselves

after a journey that

no one can take for us."

Marcel Proust
(Maria's cards)