Anna Jarvis – a Woman With a Head on Her Shoulders

When Ann Jarvis died, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on May 10, 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Grafton is the home to the International Mother's Day Shrine. From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war (with specific reference to The Great War, now known as World War I). Nine years after the first official Mother's Day holiday, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. holidays.

What should follow this excerpt from Wikipedia…

Unfortunately, Anna Jarvis soon came to realize that she liked the gifts and flowers and gave up on the fight against commercialization.

Yeah, I didn’t do much for Mother’s Day. I live six miles from my parent’s house. I did call and wish her a happy Mother’s Day, but I didn’t visit, and I still haven’t bought her anything. I haven’t the faintest clue as to what she would want. Being a man of questionable spending practices ($400 on beer a month?) there are some things I absolutely refuse to buy. While women like flowers and cards and crap like that, I can’t see spending $15 for flowers that will die within a week or paying $3 for a piece of paper that includes absolutely none of your own creativity. I did offer to pick up steaks for dinner one night this week but she told me not to since she already has steak that should be eaten. Ok, can’t argue with that. So instead I celebrated Mother’s Day watching the Brewers get their asses handed to them by the New York Mets while enjoying a number of cold ones. Please save your hate mail for someone else’s blog.

As horrible as it sounds, I bought something for myself on Mother’s Day. It was around 5:00 pm. I was a little bored and a little down about the Brewer’s loss and financial impact that came along with it. The Renter drove us over to Target and I bought a full sized football. The Renter looked at it in the store. “That’s too big. Can’t you get a smaller one?” I had to explain to her that if you’re going to buy sporting equipment you have to go with the real deal. Playing catch with a mini football is almost as bad as using pink bats on Mother’s Day. While the ball I bought isn’t exactly the real deal, it is the official size and has a very close to leather feel to it.

We stopped at a park on the way back home. Watching us play catch must have been pretty entertaining for the surrounding residents. There I was halfway unstable on my feet trying to field the wildly errant passes from the Renter. And then there was the Renter catching lightly lofted balls from yours truly with her arms and face (ouch!). I got an email from her today: my arms are all bruised from catching the football, it looks like you beat me up. Great, just what I need. And then: are we going to do it again tonight? You try tossing a football around with someone who has hands the size of a 12 yr old and can only throw it ten yards.

But at least she tried. I got my favorite bartender to stop over and the pussy wouldn’t even try throwing it. He mumbled something about throwing out his arm and not being able to masturbate or something like that.

In other news… I was on the phone later in the evening, sitting on the front step when a tan Cadillac pulled up with the stereo blasting. I took a closer look at the driver and it was the old roommate. Apparently he and some co-workers went down to Indy for some car race. Since none of them had cars big enough to comfortably fit four people they rented a Cadillac for $30 a day. So there’s the old roommate in the 2007 Cadillac, windows all rolled down, cranking that “Just bought a Cadillac, throw some D’s on it” song. If you know the old roommate and his “in the hood” speaking abilities, it was pretty hilarious.