I hate Mother's Day

Oh, come on. Y’all know you are here for the spicy takes.

Once again I must endure an entire fucking day’s worth of memes about how Mother’s Day is for everyone who has so much as stood downwind from a child, ever, in their entire lives. Or had a pet.

I want to be clear that I did not have kids so that I could earn a fucking medal or something. I had kids because I wanted kids. I had grown up in an extremely dysfunctional family, and so I was sort of operating from a combination of “A pet rock could be a better parent than mine were” and just the normal young-adult bit of Wanting All The Grownup Things. Husband, home, kids. I didn’t want to be a 1950s housewife, just wanted a family.

The only bit I wanted that I actually got was having my son first. I had wanted one of each and to have the boy first because I’d always wanted an older brother. Obviously, I had no control over the outcome; I just got lucky.

Sort of. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

But anyway. I didn’t do it for the reward. Even before I began, I knew there wouldn’t be much of one; I’d watched my stepmother struggle too much with being a Navy wife and functional single mother (Dad spent four years away on the USS Nimitz) not to understand that. And once I was actually in the trenches I came to know that I had not understood even a tenth of how hard it would be.

For instance, take another look at my face in the second photo. Yes, that’s redness and swelling. I was crying. My daughter’s father had just brought me back to my apartment, where I was expected to live by myself and take care of a newborn, and me fresh from a caesarian section and on Percocet to boot. We hadn’t been back fifteen minutes and he was already leaving. He took this photo. (Two photos, in fact, one right after the other.) Completely ignored my face. Walked out the door. I would go on to lose every one of our mutual acquaintances who was still pretending to be my friend because I refused to be happy about the situation.

I think about that sort of thing when I see some asshole sharing a meme about how cat owners are “mothers.” I’ve been both a cat slave and a mother. No you fucking aren’t. I do joke about being Hypothetical Current Pet’s mommy, but it’s not remotely the same. I’ve never had to follow a cat around the living room to make sure he wouldn’t eat carpet nails. I’ve never had someone steal my cat to punish me for sending her son to prison. If that had happened, no one has to go to family court on their own nonexistent dime to reclaim a stolen cat. Jesus Christ. Get a fucking grip.

I was against “identifying” before I became a terf. I was a direct victim of that sort of “identifying.” My stepmother baldfaced lied to me about being my mother for three and a half fucking years before we moved back to the States and my mother finally found us. Dad had gotten custody of me when I was three and a half and then absconded out of the country with me when Mom was still supposed to have visiting rights. To this day Reba insists she’s my mother because she raised me, even though Mom did not exactly have a choice in the matter. And then when I lost my son to his paternal grandmother, I had to contend with this shit again. I don’t think he ever called her anything but “Gammaw,” but his legally-binding documentation says she’s his mother. It is an insult. I can’t undo it. I have to live with it.

Both my children’s births were difficult. My son has a misshapen skull to this day (you can see it in the first photo) because a big burly OB used a vacuum extractor to get him out of me. My section for my daughter was not elective; I held out as long as I could but she insisted on trying to come out face-first and then on not coming out at all. I don’t birth well on my back, and I produce nine-pound babies. It is what it is. But it also means I don’t well tolerate random idiots who think having special feelings or performing certain rituals makes them mothers. “I did all the important stuff. Who cares about the biology?” The biology is the only fucking reason that kid existed for you to claim, you absolute fucking nutter. It is particularly jarring seeing this sentiment from women. It’s not even always women who’ve never produced a child. My stepmother went on to have her own kid, so she knows. I will never understand her lack of empathy on this subject.

I understand even less this sort of bullshit from terfs. Oh I see, so biology is important when you’re taking a piss but not when you’re claiming someone else’s kid or a label you’re not entitled to? That’s very interesting. Tell me more. Actually, shut the fuck up and sit down. You done shot your own credibility, ma’am.

I went on a tear about this on Facebook already.

and then

A hundred years ago, there is a good chance I’d have died having my son and my daughter would never have existed. Even if I’d survived my son, I wouldn’t have survived my daughter, and she wouldn’t have survived either. I didn’t do this for a medal, but the very fucking least you can do is stop treating a biological relationship as a social status or an identity.

Don’t do it for me. Do it for women’s humanity. That matters to you, right?