A MILF's Guide to Mother's Day
No 1-800-Flowers spon con here. But only bc they didn't ask me.
Yesterday morning around 9 am EST I realized I had not purchased a gift for 2 out of my 3 moms. No, I am not part of some “Big Love” style polyamorous Utah based family. I have my real mom, my stepmom, and my mother-in-law.
Panic washed over me as I raced around the World Wide Web looking for a florist to deliver something to my stepmom in Palm Desert by Sunday morning. I was simultaneously on r/Watercolor looking for gifts for my watercolor obsessed MIL in Miami. $300 later everyone had a gift scheduled to arrive in the next 30 hours. Phew. Oh, to my sister Paige: if you’re reading this, you owe me $150. Pay up, bitch.
For the past week my husband (a well meaning man but still, unfortunately, a man) has asked me “what do you want to do for Mother’s Day?” 16 times. Every time he asks me I go into fight-or-flight mode. My body tenses up. My heart races more than it usually does on my daily dose of 40 mg of Adderall. My butthole puckers. My jaw clenches. “I don’t know, let me think about it,” I lie.
The truth is, I know exactly what I want for Mother’s Day: to be left the fuck alone. I don’t want to do one goddamn thing. I want to lay in my bed and look at my phone until my eyes bleed. I want to stay in my room while Pedro Pascal spoon feeds me a delicious soup and then gives me a scalp massage while telling me Hollywood gossip. I want to be blissfully unaware of litter boxes, laundry, dishes, groceries, hangnails, dust bunnies, and the oral hygiene of an 8-year-old boy. I don’t want to use even one brain cell to think about taking care of anyone for the day. I may not even eat. I may not get up to use the bathroom. In fact, I’d like a bedpan for Mother’s Day so I can piss from the comfort of my own sheets.
If you’re a mom you know about the invisible mental load. This is the hidden list of things moms (or whatever gender the “primary” homemaker) do that go unnoticed. My husband is an amazing husband. He’s a hot Latin(x? o? what are we doing these days?) lawyer who gets mistaken for Antonio Banderas and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
He’s helpful around the house. He does the dishes that I neglect. He reloads the dishwasher after I load it (I like to play Jenga with my plates and cups and no matter how many times he explains how to properly load the dishwasher I end up free styling it every time.) He does his own laundry. He dutifully takes the trash bags I leave outside my front door another 10 feet to the actual trash cans. He pays our bills, he heats up my teapot in the morning, and he has remembered to buy me flowers for the last 5 important flower centric holidays. In short:
But back to the mental load. According to my one second of research there are three categories of mental loads:
Cognitive labor
Emotional labor
Mental labor
Cognitive labor includes all the tasks it takes to manage a household: making appointments, creating Pinterest boards of cheap and easy dinners under 30 minutes that really take 90 minutes and cost $40 a serving, planning the shopping list based on those dinners, planning the backup shopping list of things your child will actually eat (Bagel Bites, Pirate’s Booty, filet mignon), etc.
Emotional labor includes making sure your child is happy, making sure their Pokémon binder is organized by psychic or water type, making sure your husband isn’t going to have a heart attack from his job, making sure you and your husband are connecting both emotionally and physically, making sure your dog has enough toys to stimulate his walnut sized inbred doodle brain so that he doesn’t eat your favorite pillow, etc.
Mental labor includes both of the aforementioned labors and is the most exhausting of all. It falls on the primary homemaker to constantly assess the needs of every individual in the family and anticipate what needs they might have. That means every time I refill a toilet paper roll I need to take mental stock of how many rolls we have left. Every time the soap bar gets down to the size of a slice of prosciutto I need to remember to either refill the soap dish or buy more soap at the store. I also need to keep track of where Dove sensitive skin unscented soap bars are cheapest, because that’s what my husband uses and what I call my “pussy soap” because it’s the only soap that doesn’t give me a UTI.
I have a running list of things in my head at all times. I also have extremely severe ADHD. My head sounds like Grand Central Station at all times. There are trains and people and thoughts and pussy soap bars whizzing around my head non-stop. I have a chalkboard in my kitchen where the other members of my household can write down when we’re running low on things. If you live with a man you know “running low on things” means something different to you than it does to a man.
I end up going to the store literally almost every day because no one in my home communicates when we’re running low on things. My child will ask me for soap or shampoo after I find out he’s been showering without soap or shampoo for a week. “What are you doing in there, then?” I asked. “Just getting wet, I guess,” he replied. Ok then.
On top of this invisible load is the physical load. I pack all the lunches. I cook all the meals. I drive the kid to and from school. I am a housekeeper, chauffeur, chef, therapist, art teacher, dog walker, volunteer firefighter, gardener, triage nurse, and sexual dynamo. I am soft during cuddles, hard during homework, medium well when I’m cooking steak. I have to be everything to every person in my household and also make time for 𝓼𝓮𝓵𝓯 𝓬𝓪𝓻𝓮.
On top of everything I do for everyone else I also have to find time daily to: exercise, do a skin care routine, practice mindfulness, get adequate sunshine, drink 14 gallons of water, put on makeup and a little outfit to boost my mental health, dry brush my lymphatic system (lower extremities), gua sha my lymphatic system (upper extremities), be kind but also assertive, be soft but strong, be hard but tender, be a lady in the streets and a freak in the sheets. Oh and most importantly, make it all look 𝓮𝓯𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓽𝓵𝓮𝓼𝓼.
Why do I have to make it look effortless? Because as a woman I’ve been taught that the worst thing you can do as a woman is complain! You could make someone feel bad! And then they will hate you! And then you will feel bad! Forever! :(
So what’s the solution?
There’s a larger issue at work here. And that’s the “being perceived as a bitch” issue when I set a boundary. I’m not saying my husband or son call me a bitch to my face (they do it behind my back, like gentlemen.) But when I don’t pull my weight (both mental and physical) the house descends into chaos.
I am responsible for creating this dynamic. I did this to myself. And the shitty part is, even when I ask for help and I receive help that’s still not completely solving the problem because I’m still doing mental load stuff! I’m still in charge of delegating the tasks and then making sure the tasks are done.
So when my husband sweetly asks me, “what do you want to do for Mother’s Day?” my answer should be:
I DON’T WANT TO DO FUCKING ANYTHING BITCH! I WANT TO BE DRIVEN TO A SEASIDE SANITARIUM AND TAKE THE AIRS WHILE I COVER MY LINEN DRESS WITH A WOOLEN BLANKET AS I’M PUSHED AROUND IN A WICKER WHEELCHAIR.
So what should you get your wife, mother, baby mama, or secret girlfriend who is pregnant with your bastard child this Mother’s Day? The answer is behind this paywall: