Everyone has moved on from Mother's Day, but I am still stuck. As with all things weird about me, I chalk up that kind of stuff to some Freudian dynamic or another. Freudian explanations of the weird are even weirder and so somehow it all makes perfect sense. I love the efficiency of that!

Freud would say that I am fixated at some earlier stage of psychosexual development. Now don't be so quick to dismiss this psychobabble as, well, psychobabble. Instead, contemplate the following: I am a motherless daughter and I am a motherless mother. I have been the former for almost 20 years, the latter for the past 12 years. Can you think of a more profound reality that could cause a woman to get stuck (fixate) on Mother's Day? Me thinks not. So, you see what I mean? That Freud, I'm tellin' ya, a genius that man. He was also a cocaine user (abuser? addict?) which probably only fueled his genius, his creative thinking, and his prolific writing. Go figure.

I ran the idea past my children of celebrating everyday like it was Mother's Day. I was right about their reaction. None of them even acknowledged my idea. They just took their turns at rolling their eyes, sighing heavily, and giving me that look (you know the one). Then, just for fun, I suggested that maybe every day should be Kids Day, instead. Oh boy, that got a rise out of everybody!

You wouldn't believe how animated the conversation became with all three of my children talking at once about the million and one things parents could do every single day of the year to celebrate Kids Day! YAY! My youngest daughter even hatched an idea about how to campaign for a year long celebration of kids that would involve gifts and parades and parties and vacations and of course, shopping. Yeah. Shopping!

When I expressed my resistance to the idea of Kids Day Every Day on the basis that they didn't greet my suggestion of having Mother's Day every day with the same enthusiasm they explained the obvious to me. It seems that my children believe parents, all parents want to have children. The girls noted that adoption is absolute confirmation of this fact, because "you don't have to adopt if you don't want to." My son observed that "nobody makes you have a baby." On the other hand my kids believe that children don't have much sayso in any of this, that parents always boss them around and tell them what to do, and parents make all the rules. In return for inflicting this miserable existence on their children, the least parents could do is celebrate their children every day. This from three children who stated repeatedly that they are all going to live nearby when they are grownups.

Freud would say that my children's observations are a reflection on the perpetual struggle between the conflicting needs and roles of the Id, the Ego and the Superego. It all makes me smile. I think I'm ready to move on now and give it a shot at celebrating my children, myself, their father, the girls' other mother, and my own mother...every day.