But it’s more than that.

I wrote yesterday about how today is all too often painful for many different kinds of Mothers for many different reasons.

What I didn’t mention though, are a particular subset of (Original) Mothers, those who for good or ill happen to have given birth on Mother’s Day.

Oh yes, birth happens on that second Sunday in May, just as any other day. So there are Mother’s Day Original Mothers/”Birthmothers”; those womyn who gave birth on Mother’s Day, who place or find their children in adoptions. Some even blog about their experiences, here for example.

Thus Mother’s Day takes on whole new levels of meaning for those “lucky” few.

Why write about them on a day like to today, a day all about Spring flowers and Sunday Brunches and all the heartwarming good feelings people fixate upon when they hear the words “Mother’s Day?” I mean come on, womyn losing their kids permanently, and into things like sealed adoptions? What a downer. Who the hell wants to talk about things like that on a day like this?

Well, I do, but not only out of empathy.

For you see, one of those few Mothers who gave birth on Mother’s Day in the late 1960’s in Ohio just happened to be my Mother. Which means Mother’s Day, also happens to fall on my Birthday many years. The particular day I was born, for example.

Being a product of a sealed adoption I can only imagine what that has meant to her decade after decade (both the good, and the potential anguish, perhaps even anguish a bit above and beyond the usual due to the arbitrary significance of said date.)

I certainly know what it meant to me. Being a sealed records adoptee who has a Birthday as Mother’s Day is it’s own particular hell.

I’ve also had somewhat of an insight into what it’s meant for my Adoptive Mother, though I won’t presume to speak for her, or to her feelings on this.

So today I can only make one phone call, when the reality is, I need to make two.

Though odds are I’d be willing to bet My Original Mother wishes she could call and wish me “Happy Birthday” as well, (although she too has been unable to cross the divide Ohio’s sealed records have created.) As is, I have no way of knowing whether or not she even knows whether I’m still alive.

So for the Mother I’ve never known, (having the Ohio sealed records system to ‘thank’ for that) all I can do is send my “Happy Mother’s Day” out across the net.

You deserved better than that.