Ann Althouse does me the huge favor of reminding me Mother’s Day is this weekend. My wife would agree with her that breakfast in bed is not a reward for Mom. The idea of trying to balance a breakfast tray while the children are bouncing on the bed is horrifying enough. Add the likely quality of the breakfast (scrambled eggs that crunch, cold toast, raw breakfast sausage, nearly fermented orange juice found in the back of the refrigerator) and the food competition with two large dogs, and my wife starts thumbing through Dante’s Inferno to find out in which circle of Hell she’s landed.
Then she’ll adjourn to the kitchen to discover Dad and the children had attempted to make chocolate chip pancakes first, but that ended in failure (though it does explain the sugar-wired children with brown faces). The sink is newly filled with more dishes than the mess tent for Patton’s army. The stove has a mixture of instant batter and the eggs from breakfast, mixed with milk and syrup to form a concrete-like substance that might require dynamite.
If, after having recognized the failure from the previous year, Dad decides to do something else for Mother’s Day, he may decide “the family should take Mom out for brunch.” Will he make the reservation ahead of time? No, of course not. So when he tells Mom at 7:00 AM it’s time to get up, he has a ready explanation. “I need your help to get the kids ready for the earlier Mass so we can take you to brunch. See, we’ll go to the earlier Mass, then we’ll get to the restaurant just in time for it to open so we won’t have to wait for a table.”
Mom of course sees right through this and begins to thumb through Dante again. She knows waking the kids early will only result in them screaming while getting dressed, screaming in the car, screaming through church and then screaming during brunch. They will fall asleep on the way home just long enough to recharge the batteries to prevent a well-deserved nap by Mom later that afternoon.
Mass runs late (damn longwinded priest) and the family is late to the restaurant where they are subjected to a one hour wait (they were told a half hour). When they are finally seated, the buffet tables are pointed out for them. And then quick as a shot Dad is up there before Mom can say, “Will you watch the children while I go fix their plates?” Eventually Dad comes back carrying a plate with enough food to feed the aforementioned Patton’s army, but nothing that would feed Mom or the children.
So Mom makes her way to the buffet that has been well-picked-clean by the other families that didn’t go to church (damn heathens, damn priest). She manages to find enough fruit and cold cereal to feed the children and returns to the table just in time to see Dad going back to the buffet for dessert. Mom feeds her young (made even more annoying by hunger, and what-do-you-mean-you-don’t-like-puffed-rice-cereal?) while waiting for Dad to return. Upon his triumphant return THIS time he remembers the children and feeds them all sorts of sugary sweets while the healthy food Mom picked out gets rudely shoved aside.
Mom finally is allowed to go pick out her breakfast at the buffet that is being cleared away by the wait staff. After fighting with the waitress for the last of the cold scrambled eggs (kinda crunchy) and some undercooked sausage, she returns to her table to discover the children, tired but buzzed on sugar, alternating between yelling and crying, is causing such a ruckus that it is clearly time to go home. And since Mom keeps track of the bills, she gets the “pleasure” of totaling the bill and signing the credit card receipt.
The family finally gets home, Mom tired, hungry and frazzled, the children armed with a second wind, Dad pleased with himself over the brilliant idea he had at the last minute, just in time for Dad to go golfing with his buddies.
And Mom thinks, “It could be worse. We could’ve gone to McDonalds.”
