Mother's Day Musings

Dear Reader,

We begin by commiserating the wretched husbands among our readers who remembered the holiday celebrated today only in the face of the brutal bombardment of consummate doggerel that is the standard fare of Mother’s Day talks in any given sacrament meeting. We are happy to report, however, that our own sacrament meeting was relatively kitsch-free, and that the only wretched husband on our editorial board did remember that today was Mother’s Day and honored the occasion with acts of incomparable sweetness. Because it is Mother’s Day, because we are blessed with an uncommonly generous disposition, and because we are endowed with an uncommon facility in the art of preterition, we shall not say a word about the unpleasant fact that not a soul of you took note that last week’s post marked the one hundredth installment of our illustrious Review; not one of you took a moment to congratulate us on our perseverance, nor yourselves on your good fortune; not one of you seized the opportunity to observe that such a post constituted one small click for a mouse, one giant leap for the blogosphere. Who was counting? you might feebly ask. Who wasn’t counting? we forcefully return. But, today being Mother’s Day, we shan’t say a word on this unpleasant subject. No, fond reader, in an act of surpassing longanimity, we shall look over this collective omission and bid the happiest of mother’s days to one and all, and we shall seek to render the day happier still by punctuating it with the invariably agreeable experience of reading the latest installment of this our illustrious Review. We proceed.

Monday (May 7): “Hooray, hooray for the seventh of May,” said Eli as she bounded out of her crib to greet the dawn. Things went downhill from there, but we remember few details.

Tuesday (May 8): Ward playgroup in the morning. Julia and Callie conspired to induce their mothers to take them out for ice cream afterwards. Julia expressed her gratitude by behaving abominably. Things generally looked up from there. Justin attended the final lecture in a course modestly entitled, “Justice,” at the close of which the professor delivered a peroration filled with pathos and fervor during which he bemoaned the benighted state of Enlightenment Liberalism at the present hour (manifested in part by the disappointing performance of social democracy in the recent French presidential election). But the great Zeuss Ackerman concluded with this happily original ray of hope: “But who knows,” he concluded. “Perhaps after the darkness comes the dawn.” The good professor then exited stage left to the tones of deafening applause.

Wednesday (May 9): A nondescript day during which things happened, to be sure, but not even the most gifted satirist could mould them, without lying, into an amusing narrative. And our desire to entertain can never conquer our devotion to strict historical veracity.

Thursday (May 10): During an afternoon trip to the library Julia got her hand stuck in a sliding door but was saved through the quick intervention of her observant mother (Eli retains enough of her baby fat to have bounced safely from the library floor when her mother dropped her to save her distressed older sister). This evening the R.S.B.C. (Relief Society book club) gathered at the home of Bianca Daniels to discuss The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, the latest croak from the epigones of Upton Sinclair in a grand tradition that capitalizes magnificently on humankind’s deep-seated, if inexplicable, desire to be terrified out of its wits by the contents of its dinner plate. The enemy in our day is corn, that venerable crop which the Indians called maize in an innocent age before British settlers failed, incomprehensibly, to tell the difference between it and what their descendants would come to call grain. In any case, corn is evil, says Mr. Pollan, and it is ubiquitous. Lia returned in a towering rage, making king corn the object of her implacable venom. Justin listened halfheartedly, convinced all the same that the marvels of modern medicine will keep pace with humanity’s redoubled efforts to eat itself into oblivion. We should add that Justin was aided along toward such a philosophic view of the situation by spending the evening alone with Julia, Eli, and Callie.

Friday (May 11): Lia taught Joy School in the morning and survived mostly unscathed. In the afternoon the ladies of the house went to Eva Allen’s to check on our “garden.” To Julia’s great delight, something (we forget what) appears to be giving a good deal of thought to the prospect of sprouting. In the evening, a kindly visiting teacher resolutely insisted that Lia and Justin go out this evening, while she held down the fort at home and the girls slept. We initially thought, wildly, that we would do the unthinkable and go see a movie. But we thought better of it after only a cursory glance at the common fare in the surrounding theaters (Lia was sorely tempted by Spiderman III, but Justin, in a bout of puritanical ferocity, was intransigent in his opposition). Instead, we went to the Yale bookstore with the understanding that Lia was to select an article of Yale apparel as a Mother’s Day present (she chose a pair of “lounge” pants) and Justin was to select a book in honor of his moderately successful attempts at curbing his bibliomania during our time in New Haven (he chose, from the bargain rack, Dorris Kearns Goodwin’s “A Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln”). We then took a walk through campus and bought some spectacular ice cream at Ashlee’s, reflecting all the while what a wonderful place Yale is when its undergraduates are absent.

Saturday (May 12): We had a ward activity at East Rock Park, during which Julia informed Justin that she needed to go potty. To their mutual dismay, both restrooms were locked, bearing signs that informed interested parties, in large print, that the restrooms were “Closed for Vandalism.” While Justin wondered whether this meant the restrooms were closed in consequence of having been previously vandalized, or whether they were now closed for the express purpose of providing a forum for acts of vandalism at a date yet future, Julia reminded her pensive father that she really needed to go potty. So the hapless pair searched for a wilderness area—a difficult task in a densely populated park—found one, and did their best to make what arrangements they could. The enterprise was not without its setbacks, and in the end father, mildly dampened skirt in hand, and daughter, now sans pantaloons, walked hand in hand back to the car for a quick trip home and a new pair of pants. In the evening after bedtime, Julia sneaked out of her room while Lia went grocery shopping and she and Justin made a Mother’s Day card for Lia, featuring no less than three adorable tracings of Julia’s diminutive hand.

Sunday (May 13): Having learned from his Valentine’s Day faux pas, Justin again made breakfast in bed for Lia but this time substituted strawberries for Italian sausage. Lia was grateful for the amendment. In the afternoon Justin, at the apex of his social powers, called the LaDukes and quite diplomatically invited ourselves over for the balance of the afternoon and most of the evening. Addie sent Julia into a state of rhapsodic wonderment by giving a gift that keeps on giving—her very own Disney Princesses edition of Polly Pocket madness. Now Lia, like Addie herself, can devote her life to the eminently practical enterprise of dressing and undressing dolls of three inches’ height with exacting rapidity and monotonous regularity. Julia radiated the very consummation of happiness.

And so we leave you, from the presence of our everlasting pills (Julia and Eli), and we repeat our salutations to the mothers among you. Heaven reward you for your most important and necessary labors of love. As Lord Benedict phrased the matter at a pivotal moment in a play which more than any other in the Shakespearean canon lives up to its name, “The world must be peopled!” And so it is.