Mother's Day 2000

"Number 20!"

The numbers are not in any particular order, just given so that when the party’s table is open, the restaurant manager can yell the number out and not have to try to pronounce a possibly difficult last name.

I had too much wine last night at the wedding and too little sleep. My hair is held back by a handful of multicolored butterflies, flowers, and a leopard print clip barrette. I will not take off my sunglasses in the super bright Sunday morning Bickford’s. Not only is it Mother’s Day, it is also (the newly wed couple just informed me) First Communion Day. But so far I have not seen any cherubic children with pious parents. Just lots of women with flowers.

Bob is doing better than I am. He wasn’t as bored as I was at the wedding so he didn’t drink as much as I did. Also, he didn’t have nightmares about tornadoes and other natural disasters. After we’ve been seated and ordered our coffee, he asks me what kind of jelly I want then he diligently searches through the stacks for the strawberry. The table is a little sticky we notice as we choose our breakfasts. I watch the families around me. I build a fortress with menus to sheild myself from the glare of the sun reflecting off the shiney SUVs and minivans in the parking lot while I wait uncomfortably for my omelet.

No one has flowers at that table. The mother has dark brown hair and a thin mouth that looks accustomed to scowling. The father has a striped shirt, big oversized stripes, and short sandy hair. He likes to point and gesture. Right now, he is pointing and gesturing at his daughter. The mother accompanies his motions with deeper degrees of frowns, and the occasional quiet word of parental support. “If you don’t want them, then why did you order that?!” the father is practically shouting. Or maybe it’s not the volume so much as it is the manner, his face looming too close to the girl’s as he barks his rhetorical question. She is flanked by her brothers, a little one on her right and a slightly older one on her left. All of the kids’ backs are to me, but I can see the slightly older brother’s face from the side as he is at the end of the booth. He is drawing on the placemat with crayons. The mother smiles warmly at this boy for a moment then resumes frowning when she returns her attention to her daughter. The waitress finishes taking their order and the table is relatively quiet for a while.

The girl and the older boy are playing some game, heads leaned close together over the placemat and crayons in hand. “You’d better think of something, or he’s gonna hang you!” the mother says smugly to the daughter, beaming a smile at her son, who I am thinking is probably cheating or misspelled the word. More silence. The newly weds are seated far away from us , me, Bob, and the unhappy family. They are poorly matched and I wonder how long it will take for this to dawn on them. Bob and I chat about various forgettable topics while my attention wanders over to the claw machine, trying to imagine what it would take to actually snag one of the tempting beanie baby prizes.

What am I thinking? I hate beanie babies.

The waitress has staggered up to the table bearing a tray full of fresh and fruity breakfasts. A moment later, the father addresses his daughter in an exasperated tone, “You’d better just eat them. You can scrape it off, but it’s too late now to change it. Why didn’t you ask before you ordered them?!"

I inspect a menu but my attention is drawn back when I hear the father’s disgusted voice, “Are you crying?! Are you crying? Great, now she’s crying,”

I can’t hear the daughter’s voice at all although I know she is speaking. Her head is down and her posture is more defeated than defiant. I wonder if her disappointment at the mile high pile of whipped cream on top of her waffles might have gone unnoticed if it weren’t for her parents’ scrutiny. "You’ve ruined mother’s day. You’ve ruined everything!” I hear her father say.

And so another perfectly good mother’s day is ruined.

I am happy for my sunglasses, happy that they are hiding the direction and nature of my gaze. If the mother and father saw it, it would only serve as further evidence for how much their daughter ruined the day by drawing unwanted negative attention to their otherwise perfect family. I fight the nearly overwhelming temptation to ruin it more by flinging an open grape jelly at the man. I want to see jelly oozing down the father’s face. I want to pour my pulpy orange juice over the mother’s head for crippling her daughter. I want to make the daughter laugh, send back the waffles she felt pressured into ordering, and tell her to order whatever the fuck she wants. I want to dance on the table and kick fruit and whipped cream onto the father’s LL Bean jersey. I settle for stabbing jellies with my fork.