HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY (Okay, it was two days ago.)

We all know the truth--Mother's Day is for kids. It gives them an excuse to plant Dixie cups with marigold seeds in kindergarten. It gives them a reason to scribble cards on construction paper and make lumpy muffins.

I don't know who invented Mother's Day, but if they thought it was really going to be a relaxing day for mothers to sit around sipping tea and admiring their flowers and feeling honored, they were nuts. Actual mothers are too busy cleaning up the muffin batter and figuring out what to do with the Dixie cup marigold plant.

My biggest concern on Mother's Day is usually what on earth I'm going to give my mother. Mother's Day goes on forever, if you're lucky enough to have your mom around for a long time. My grandmother is 92 or something like that. (Her mother lived to 107, leaving my grandmother in the interesting position of sending Mother's Day cards into her eighties.) So we celebrate Mother's Day for a good long while around here.

I am not good with Mother's Day gifts. My mother and I have such different tastes that I even have a hard time thinking of something to give her for Christmas. For Mother's Day, I usually come up with something homemade from the kids, and some sort of plant. A tomato plant or something, since May is planting season. My primary thought on waking up Mother's Day morning is usually, "Drat--we didn't get Grandma anything yet."

Mother's Day reminds me of Gotcha Day.

One of Amelia's friends, a nine-year-old adopted from China, asked recently why we don't celebrate Francie's Gotcha Day (for those who haven't adopted, Gotcha Day is the day you get your kid, the day you finally take custody). And we don't--celebrate Gotcha Day, that is. I know this is not exactly politically correct these days in an adoptive family, and I hope Francie doesn't grow up feeling inferior because we didn't do the Gotcha Day thing.

I told Amelia's friend that we don't do it because:

(1) We have bio kids too, and it doesn't seem right to have the adopted kids get an extra special day, in addition to birthdays. It might make the bio kids feel inferior, because THEY don't get Gotcha Days. Or it might make the adopted kids feel inferior, because if they are on equal footing with the bio kids, why do they need an extra day to celebrate? Just what is Gotcha Day making up for?

(2) We have eight people in this household, and only one repeat month on birthdays. Someone has a birthday seven months of the year. I have enough trouble keeping track of that. (My father has totally given up keeping track of birthdays. He's a generous guy at Christmas and any time he decides we need a little extra cash, but he won't keep track of the specific dates. He can't even remember MY birthday, and I'm an only child.)

It would be fine with me if Mother's Day and my birthday went the way of Gotcha Day, and we just didn't do them at all. Mother's Day is an essential, though, because the kids enjoy it.

On Mother's Day morning, Lillie was thrilled that she could finally give me the construction paper cards she had made, and the seedling, drowning in a soggy milk-carton planter. (I don't know what kind of plant it is, but unfortunately I don't think it's going to survive long enough for us to tell.)

After the gifts, after the hugs, she said, "Today is all about you, Mommy." Then she asked me to make her waffles.

I said, "If today is all about me, how come I have to make waffles?"

Lillie said, as if it should be obvious, "Today is all about you, but it's also all about waffles."

Yup. That sums up Mother's Day real well. And aren't we lucky it does.