Dads get shafted. For the past few days in many classrooms around the country, children have been working on Mother’s Day presents. Kids are being prodded to think of all the wonderful things their mothers do for them besides “making food“. I think elementary teachers throughout the years have painted themselves in corners and are now the default gift and centerpiece providers for all American households. I would like to know where this started, but since that first turkey went home there has been year after year of stuffed paper, traced hand or paper bag versions of birds to plop on the Thanksgiving table. One holiday taken care of. Around winter break you’ll see classroom made art pieces going home to celebrate the birthday of winter apparently. Lots of snowmen, mittens and fir trees that with a few hands-full of tinsel would represent, well you know. Another holiday covered and we’re not even to the new year. We make sure that children have gifts for parents, holiday decorations for the house and whoever invented Grandparents’ Day got us to have children cheer up their one day as well. Check, check, check.
I’ve tried to stay out of the gift providing business, but the pressure is daunting. You see that everyone else has had their classes making stuff and you wonder if your children will be the only ones on the block who didn’t get to carry anything home made of bags, sticks, sticky tape and construction paper. You wonder if they are taking a hit to psyche, or at some point will come back with a handgun, point it at you and ask, “WHY DIDN'T WE EVER MAKE DANCING LEPRECHAUNS?”
I think holidays can be taken care of at home. Mother’s Day is a great chance for Dad to meet with the kids, talk about the virtues possessed by his wife, decide what she might like and lead the children to make or purchase it. Older children can be encouraged to write or make something at home in their rooms. If high school kids can rig up bombs without parents knowing it, I think they can sneak in art supplies, paper and writing implements.
If we’re not careful, December will be devoted to dads as we celebrate Half Father's Day. We’ll provide gifts, and do it the way we do for kids with summer birthdays. It would catch on eventually. No Father Left Behind. But in what other profession do bosses feel obligated to provide supplies, ideas and time for employees to make anniversary gifts, Valentine cards or dinner party place settings for their families? This is one of those areas, like pajama day, where it’s hard to think of teaching as a profession after spending couple weeks making paper mache horns of plenty filled with things kids think they should be thankful for.
I left this piece for a couple days and came back to bring it to an end. In that time, I started noticing all the things my daughter brought home from school for me. There is the coiled clay vase with her fingerprints all over it, the paper flowers, and the one I’ve had on my walls for years; the portrait of me with circle eyeballs sprouting lashes out of the top, the U mouth with horizontal lines ending each end, and the beautiful L nose with two dots inside. “I Love You” it read. That picture has pulled me out of many a dark day. I’ve reached the whole of my ambivalence. To the teacher who helped her make it, I’d like to say thank you and
Happy Mother’s Day.
