I always feel terrible on or around days like this -- when people insist that one should praise certain people for all that they have done and blah blah blah. It's all very well and good if you feel that the people in your life are actually deserving of this kind of devotion, but I don't. The more I learn about my mother, the more it seems to me like she simply regarded getting married and having children as something one does when one grows up. She never put a great deal of thought into whether it would be a good or noble thing to do (which is unsurprising to me now; she never puts a great deal of thought into anything at all and I suspect that she never has and never will), never looked at the world around her to consider whether it was an ideal place in which to raise a new life, and certainly never made the slightest effort to become the kind of person who could rightly and knowingly guide and support a child.
I have often maintained that the decision to become parents is largely a selfish one, since people tend to think more about their own personal desires when it comes to having offspring rather than considering any of the aforementioned points, but I don't think that my mother was even all that fervent about having children -- she was simply adhering to the perceived requirements of her assigned social role. The woman puts more thought into crossing the street than she did into giving birth (twice) because at least in the former case she remembers to look both ways. But even with this knowledge, I would not feel so unkindly towards my mother on this day if she had not been so terrible at it -- which, again, is a function of her willful ignorance and unwillingness to think about anything.
On the surface, she was a good mother. She drove my sister and I to the store and the library to after school activities; she encouraged us to do well in school (though even here it must be noted that she never actually encouraged us to take an interest in any of the material); she bought us cards and toys on our birthdays and holidays; she took our temperature and made us chicken noodle soup when we were sick; she was never physically abusive (though we were physically disciplined from time to time). And yet this is literally all that she did, because she was essentially playing a role on stage. I noted in the parenthetical that she never really encouraged us to be passionate about anything. At best, she tolerated our various interests and pursuits; at worst, she actively discouraged us from pursuing them. The entire content of her guidance and moral instruction was derived from platitudes and aphorisms and shallow religious dicta that were never expanded or elaborated upon.
And the worst part is that, owing to other reprehensible views that she holds -- but has never ever questioned, so they arguably do not even deserve to be called views that she holds -- many times even these supposedly axiomatic rules for living were completely contradicted. If I ever pointed this out -- then or now -- she basically responded by saying "whatever." When I entered college, I practically had to study philosophy, because the entire extent of my previous home training had been a seventeen-year tutorial in how to be an inexcusably shallow and stupid human being. But I have only come to realize that in relatively recent years.
There is a lot more to be said about my more specific grievances with my mother -- and with society as a whole, since one of my mother's other favorite "defenses" is, "Well, I'm not the only person who thinks this way," and she is right -- but I'm getting too angry and tired of writing this so I will have to stop here. Suffice it to say that I lack both the cruelty and the time to give my mother what she truly deserves today -- not that she possesses the required understanding or depth of mind to actually be affected by such vengeance anyway. She basically filled my early childhood with false encouragement and phony hugs and insipid Sunday School advice -- by which she unwittingly planted in me the seeds that likely underlie my strong convictions and beliefs regarding a variety of topics -- only for me to be cast into a Hell in which, I now realize, none of the things that I desire will ever be possible for me to attain: not because they do not exist, but rather because people like her are withholding them from me and attempting to destroy them altogether with every shallow word and action. How, I ask you, could I ever repay her for that?
But my hands are shaking and sticky with perspiration, so I must stop now.