In childhood you know for certain: March 8 is Mother’s Day. Mother’s — and that is that. All those Claras and Rosas, and for that matter girlfriends and neighbors, have nothing to do with the holiday. I even remember the little paper tulips we pasted onto black sheets in kindergarten. And the letters with the number 8. Our personal contribution consisted entirely of gluing them on. Still, even there the results differed. (“In the first ‘Come on, Girls!’ contest, contestant number 7 won; when asked ‘What is your name?’ she also gave her surname.”)
Mothers rejoiced equally over our identical sheets with identical tulips, smeared with glue in different ways. In the lower grades we were taught to embroider. Somewhere I even still have a little white cloth with tulips and the number 8 embroidered on it.
At school, the circle of those who celebrated the holiday widened. It now included the teacher, who gladly accepted our sheets with drawings. Boys gave us greeting cards, and the luckier among us even got books. And we too proudly felt almost like mothers — at least potentially.
In our final school year, when we had become a close-knit community, the boys prepared a surprise for us: they recorded congratulations and songs in a sound studio, on a record with a group photograph of themselves, all handsome. The songs were different. Mine went like this:
“All I have left
As a memory of you
Is a portrait, your portrait,
The work of Pablo Picasso.”
That was when I realized that gifts for different girls ought to be different. (See “What Men Talk About.”)
There were many women at work. Whenever we managed to find souvenirs for everyone, my husband was glad that I did not work at a large factory.
And today I woke up feeling sad for those times with tulips cut out so neatly by our kindergarten teachers and pasted onto paper. And for the fingers pricked while embroidering. It was lovely. We knew exactly: March 8 was Mother’s Day. And Rosa and Clara — who were they?
And you, my priceless ones, have you already pasted on your tulips? You probably won’t have time to embroider a little napkin, but do hurry up with the appliqué. Good luck to you, my pre-holiday ones — both in gluing things together (not to be confused with gluing yourselves to someone!) and in embroidery, should it suddenly come to that. And how lucky are those for whom March 8 is still Mother’s Day.
Yes — and good morning to everyone!
