The Ritual of Motherhood: Nose Rings, Stilettos, and a Touch of Alcohol

 Mother's Day is for hanging out with fellow mothers to celebrate the hard work of motherhood. And like any good ritual, it may involve costumes and mood enhancers.Mother’s Day is an honorary thing in my family. Not so much because my husband or children respect it that greatly, but because my fellow mothers do. My mom, my sister, and I have tried to stick with an annual tradition of having “bunch” in our hometown. Brunch seems to be the posh thing people do to celebrate Mother’s Day. I like to have breakfast and lunch menus smashed together, so brunch pleases me. 

 I take holidays seriously. This means I got up early today and scrambled eggs, fed dogs, and wrangled children, all while getting dressed.Stir eggs, put arm through sleeve hole. I shuffled through my closet for one of the dresses that I never have occasion to wear anymore. I found high heels that I haven’t touched since last Mother’s Day.

 Slipping my foot into the straps is something like putting on a superhero uniform. I instantly am a better person; I am a person that doesn't curse and has their "stuff" together. I was wearing the costume of my idyllic self. I wanted to dance around in her shoes a bit, breathe in her perfection, and then be ready to toss her back into the closet for next year.I did successfully dress, wrangle children into the car, and make our drive back into the interior of Florida. I have been rarely parted from the sweet little things that call me Mama, so it was a strange thing to leave them in someone else’s care and get into my mom’s car. We drove to our brunch location through sleepy streets. The city hadn’t released the hordes of church-goers yet. This is a university city, so when you travel the streets you get to see lots of “cool” people. These people wave their freak flag high; the higher, the cooler they are. I kind of miss seeing the cool people regularly. We passed one that was riding his bike wearing the male equivalent of daisy dukes, white hairy legs bright in the morning sun, but partially hidden under knee high socks emblazoned with three 6’s. He appeared to be wearing a belt made of fake bullets. His hair was partially shaven, but the unshaven part had long ringlet curls. This was half disguised by a baseball cap.
“Is it a boy or girl?” My mom asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said, looking him/her/it over again.
“Does it have armpit hair? Wait, no, that doesn’t help us.”We arrived at our restaurant, which is also one of the cool places. It was so cool that the parking lot was packed, so we had to park across the street in a dirt lot surrounded by green growth. I strongly liked this parking lot. One could imagine Tarzan swooping in to bring us menus. Now that would be cool.The restaurant is next to an ugly garage, but that is part of what makes it cool. The man at the little stand advising us to “Wait to be seated” was very tall and had a bull’s ring through the front of his nose. He was obviously cool, and pleasantly friendly. He told us the wait would be an hour. This might have been lame, but by then we had met up with my sister, who is resourceful. We sat down to wait with a mixture of cool, not cool, and semi cool people – all in the same hungry boat. My sister ordered us a carafe of mimosas.

 This is the part of the story that it is going to become apparent that I was sitting there as one of the uncool people: I can actually get a nice buzz off mimosas. For the record, I think they were heavy handed with the champagne. And I am small. And I don’t drink. And I had an empty stomach. 

 I don’t drink, so I forget quickly the results of an alcohol addled nervous system. First, I get the slow eye movement. I might have turned my head to look at you, but my eyeballs seem to be drifting into place ten seconds behind. Then—ahh, yes, then—the sweet clarity. The beauty. The answers to the meaning of life are there, at my side, visible once my eyes catch up with them. I am a happy kind of drinker.The bull-man kept ushering more and more people to their seats, people that came in after us. At one point it crossed my mind that this could be some sort of university social experiment. Let’s let these moms sit here and get drunken off the mom’s-drink-of-choice-mimosas, to see what happens. I was distracted from that idea when I considered how I was going to need to walk to a table, eventually, when the social experiment was over. And in those stiletto heels, no less. Can it be done? Of course it can! I was her today - that woman that has her shit together, and sucks down her mimosas with graceful control. I had my costume, and bull-man had his. He wanted to be cool, and I wanted to be put-together. I respected that bull’s ring, like I respected my stilettos.We made it to the table, and yep, I held it together like she would. Little boys were running around the tables outside holding dark brown beer bottles filled with blueberry soda. (Blueberry soda is cool.) I ordered my dish plus two sides, even though I had already taken in 5000 liquid calories to sustain me. When the food arrived, each piece on a separate dish, I kept having to hold up my finger to acknowledge ownership of my many plates. The waitress raised her eyebrows muttering “Good for you”. Skinny people get hated on for their food consumption like fat people do, or possibly it had something to do with the fact that I was giggling uncontrollably. I am such a happy drunk.We stayed at the restaurant until all the mimosas were gone, then a bit longer, and by then my eyes didn’t have a delay anymore. We talked about everything and nothing – all the wonderful things. We soaked up the camaraderie of being the female adults of this family, which likely won’t be celebrated again until next Mother’s Day. 

 Then we returned to my mother’s house to greet our children as responsible mothers again. We concluded our visit by a family game of flying paper airplanes in my mother’s flower garden. My son had been working diligently on a whole fleet while we were mimosa-ing it up. It was an air force battle of frequently failing jets that are highly susceptible to gusts of wind, and adults and children alike with no idea which side they were fighting for.I came home and tossed the heels into the closet haphazardly. I’m done with costumes for now. I wonder if bull-man takes out his ring when he gets home. Or is he really, truly that cool?