Mother's Day NO. 72

The Midget, my mom, was 92 this year and that makes a total of 72 Mother's Days.  Seventy-two bouquets of flowers, seventy-two plus cards expressing hallmark sentiments dripping with nostalgia and sweet nothings,  seventy-two days of movies about mother's.  Yesterday was no exception.

I once told my children that the one nearly constant I have found in Disney movies is the fact that the mother always dies or has died already. Take a look at Bambi, tragic; The Litter Mermaid, Cinderella, Snow White (if her mother was alive would she be living in the woods with 7 little men?), Pocahontas, Beauty and the Beast, just to name a few.  Do they show these movies on Mother's Day?  I think not.

On the adult level we have Turner Classic Movies that dedicated yesterday's schedule to movies about mothers.  These mothers have either harassed their children, given them up for adoption, abandoned them, or worse beaten them with coat hangers.  Now why would TCM want to spend a day of tribute to mothers by showing Mildred Pierce a movie with an ungrateful daughter, Gypsy, a movie about a mother who pushes her daughter too hard, Stella Dallas, a movie about a mother who gives her daughter up because she is made to feel unworthy to raise her child, or Imitation of Life where the daughter resents her mother because she wants to pass herself off as white but her mother won't let her.  Do you see a pattern here?  Mothers and daughters and their complicated relationships brought to the forefront on television on mother's day.  Why? And what happened to the sons?  Oh, they became presidents!

Personally, I don't get it.  On the news the other night, a newscaster reported that mothers do approximately 10 different jobs for which their salary was computed by Mom.salary.com to be between 63,472  and 115,432 depending on whether they also work outside of the home.  In 2007 CNN reported that a stay at home mom's salary for motherhood would be approximately 138,095.  So, not only did our salary go down but the picture the movies paint of us is pretty bleak.

I for one believe that you can't put a price on motherhood (even though men have tried), and yesterday was proof of that.  My mom, has lived through 72 mother's days and yesterday was no exception except that with dementia she probably doesn't remember the other 71.  Yet, for the moment it was better than a Disney movie or a TCM classic and for better or worse neither CNN nor Mom.Salary.com can attach a monetary figure to it.