My very own plate of chocolate balls

Mother's day.

Remember that day from childhood?

Silly, simple hand-made presents your mother never really needed or used?

Stained, misspelled thank-you notes attached to the heap of chocolate balls lying on a plate in the middle of the debris that used to be your mother's kitchen?

It was silly, indeed. But nevertheless, it was your one chance to meditate, even if it was just to a limited extent, on who makes it all happen. Who enables you to have that "the whole world orbits around me" perspective on life. To say thank you, and mean it. To acknowledge what you have, and who gave it to you. In my opinion, it is very important to learn how to do that when you're young.

I grew up. And became a mother. Only to find that Mother's day disappeared. Has been cruelly taken away, never to come back. It was replaced by this politically-correct, post-post-modern, meaningless creature of "Family's day".

And now, instead of enthusiastic kids doing their best in hand crafting, you find hectic parents led by their children anywhere they can spend some money, buying a product or an experience, always designed for ages up to 14, trying to figure out what it is exactly they are supposed to be celebrating. In this consumerist society in which parents have to work too many hours, in order to support their families, whom they get to spend too little time with, and try to make up for that by wasting too much money on presents - that's not really what we need. More of the same.

When trying to find out the reasons for the mysterious abduction of Mother's day I came across two possible reasons:

One being the modern society in which gender roles are pretty fluid and mobile, and are distributed much more equally between couples. No place for Mother's day if she's not the main caretaker anymore.

Another reason is a change in modern family structure .Now you can find families of all shapes and sizes and some of them don't include a mother, at least not the biological one.

Well, what I suggest in order to adapt to the changes in the traditional family structure, while keeping the focus of the day on the caretakers, and not giving the kids another day to excercise their egocentricity is as follows:

1. Keep Mother's day to mothers, and set another date for Father's day. That way fathers will get acknowledged as well. And same-sex couples can choose whether to celebrate on the day corresponding to both parents, or divide them into more traditional family roles, regardless of their gender. Divorced couples will then get the chance to celebrate with their children - each in his or her turn.

2. Change Mother's day into "Parents' day", and then both parents get their share of celebration, and everybody will be cherished and happy.

And I'll finally get my share of a kitchen in ruin, and my plate of chocolate balls!

What do you think?