We understand that Mother’s Day can be a sensitive time for many people is what the jeans company I frequent sends in mid-April at 5am, and of course I’m awake to see it peter in. It’s chased with if you’d prefer not to receive Mother’s Day-related emails from us this year, you can opt out using the link below, which I click, and that’s that. Only heard from them once with a generic 15% off coupon. Hundreds of other virtual circulars I chuck sight unseen don’t dare offer the same courtesy, gumming up my inbox with mom will love this or treat mom to something special this Mother’s Day.
I bike down the street and see a snaked line around the bodega on Cortelyou selling flowers around the clock, around the block another ten miles or so before returning to flip on the Knicks game and watch mom-centric interstitials pop between a fourth-game blowout and car commercials. Today is her day the announcer voice tells me, but every day is her day where I’m from because that’s the special brand of illness you’re born into sometimes.
Father’s Day hasn’t been roses for 13 years, but it doesn’t carry the same stink. Between the two days, I often consider how I am the square root of my father plus my mother, but I am my father’s son, so how does that add up?
How we got from a single white flower and church services 118 years ago to a man who once sold me a homemade wallet made out of recycled firehouse hose telling me you forgot, didn’t you while advertising gift cards and Red Lives Matter patches is well outside my understanding, but also maybe that the same thing across this stretch of time? Should I only permit brands to reach me if they offer the same courtesy as the place where I buy low-stretch athletic cut jeans? If I’ve made it clear to the lower end of the equation that calls and letters are unwelcome, why do I suffer through a deluge of J Crew emails and donation asks? Perhaps I am too much of a brand loyalist. Maybe I want to see what they offer in the future.