The Forb Reveals the Truth About Mother's Day

I don’t typically visit The End of Time on Sundays because I try to go to church then. On Mother’s Day, however, I come here because my mother lives in another state and I don’t have a wife (which reminds me that I need to call my mom before the day is out. Maybe Limerick Bill will write me a poem I can read to her. No, I could never read my mother a filthy limerick on her special day). I end up feeling lonely on Mother’s Day, so I come here.

Of course The Forb was here this morning. I don’t know if his parents are still living, and I don’t plan to ask unless he wants to offer up his personal information, which he probably won’t do. The Forb prefers to be a man of mystery. I could tell by the fire in his eyes that he had something vital to say to me.

“This whole Mother’s Day thing is a sham, Max. It’s an outrage.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong with celebrating motherhood? It’s how most of us got here.”

“That’s not the point,” he said, poking his pointing finger on the tabletop. “This warm and fuzzy slop has nothing to do with the origins of Mother’s Day. Do you know how it all got started, Max?”

“Nope,” I said, certain that I would soon learn.

“It was an anti-war movement! After the end of the Civil War, mothers gathered in New York to say, ‘No more!’ Six hundred and fifty thousand people died in that war, mostly men. The mothers were sick to hell about losing their sons to war. That was 1872, when the Civil War was still fresh in everyone’s minds.

“Then, a few years later, the mothers did it again, and the government finally made Mother’s Day a national holiday in 1908. That was before women even had the right to vote! Of course, we had two more world wars just to show we weren’t paying any attention, and more sons died. Now the daughters die, too. Mothers should take over the world. Maybe then the madness would stop.”

I had not considered the radical nature of Mother’s Day. It’s too bad, I guess, that we made it such a saccharine holiday. Maybe that has happened so the mothers won’t mobilize and make us stop killing each other. That’s a mom for you: Always spoiling the fun.