The Mother Competition

With every passing Mother’s Day, moms everywhere are given the chance to reflect on upon one of the most important events to happen in their lives – Who will win the Mother Competition this year?

Anyone who has spent serious time in a rural church knows exactly what I’m talking about.  When I was a kid, each Mother’s Day, the conscientious pastor would visit his local flower shop and purchase three single carnations, each tied with a ribbon bow, to present to the lucky winners.  Youngest Mother?  Carnation.  (In later years, it became politically correct to turn this award into Mother with the Youngest Baby because no one wanted to present 14-year-old Jennifer with an award for having a kid.)  Oldest Mother?  Carnation.  Mother with the Most Children?  Carnation. 

My family was so poor we couldn’t pay attention.  We didn’t have nice cars, a nice house, nice clothes, or nice shoes, but there was something we had in abundance, and that was kids.  We had little to be proud of, but we rocked at the Mother Competition because our mom won the carnation for Mother with the Most Children every. single. year.

Determining the winner is always an event.  First all mothers stand up, and the pastor begins to winnow out the losers mothers who have one child, two children, three children, and so on.  Singly and in groups, mothers have to sit down because they chose to not fully fill their respective quivers.  Finally, there is one mother standing (that would be our mother), and the pastor would say something along the lines of, “Mrs. Patsy, six kids does it again this year!” and our mother would proudly walk down the aisle and claim her prize. 

Those were good days for us kids.  We’d done our duty to our mother, and by golly, we all felt like we had a little stake in that carnation.  Nothing smelled sweeter or was more enjoyed than that single flower, stuck into an old mason jar of water. 

Sometimes there were scares.   A new mother might show up and steal someone’s glory.  Nobody forgot the year that Mrs. Gilley had her thunder stolen for Mother with the Youngest Baby when a complete stranger turned up at church on Mother’s Day with a baby two days younger than little Gracie.  It was just Plain Wrong, and we all suspected the offending mom had planned her fraud with cunning akin to that of Satan himself at the fall of Adam and Eve.  One year a family came walking down the aisle with a bevy of children, and we were sweating as we counted… one, two, three, four… five!  Five kids.  We scoffed at five kids. 

The practice fell out of fashion as we got older.  There were mutters that the annual Mother Competition caused hard feelings in the church, and the award carnations gave way to carnations for every mom.  Sore losers is what I say.  By the time we were grown up, moved away, and attending churches of our own, every woman got a carnation whether she had even ever had a child.

Imagine my chagrin when, on that particular Mother’s Day Sunday, I was talking with my mom about her new church, and she told me carnations had been given out in the traditional Mother’s Competition.  I asked her if she’d won one (knowing full well she had), and she told me the sad news that it was for the mother that had the most children PRESENT at church that day, and the award had gone to Mrs. Anderson with her paltry four children. 

That would never do.  The next year, in a covert operation that would have made the FBI envious, I made certain every single one of my siblings showed up at my parent’s church.  As we trickled in, first she was surprised, and then she cried, and we were all so happy knowing that not only was our momma happy to have all her chicks once again under the protective cover of her wings, but Mrs. Anderson could suck it.  Once again that Sunday, mom walked up proud and claimed her rightful carnation.  I may or may not have thumbed my nose at Mrs. Anderson’s oldest child.  Sure she was only twelve, but she knew EXACTLY what I meant by it.

We went back year after year.  My younger brother, Josh, never darkened a church door any other day of the year, but he was by golly there on Mother’s Day.  It took all of us.  Mrs. Anderson had rallied and squeezed out another offspring, and we couldn’t stand to tie her for first place. 

Finally, one year my mother told us that she wasn’t attending church on Mother’s Day.  Our family had grown so large with grandchildren that she couldn’t cook for everyone in the time she had after church and needed to stay home to make the meal.  Our new tradition came to be all the girls coming over early and spending the morning helping to cook, and a sweet new tradition for Mother’s Day was born. 

This past Sunday, as I was reflecting back on the Mother Competition, I asked my mom if she wouldn’t like to go to church, have us all attend with her, and win the carnation again for old times sake. 

Then she said words that rocked my world. 

“No,” she said.  “I don’t want to do that.  It always embarrassed me to win that carnation.”

Whaaaaaaaaaaat?!?  I couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d told me she’d once been a short-order cook who rode with the Hell’s Angels and had first invented the Hot Pocket as a handy ‘meal on wheels’ that could be held in one hand. 

My world has been shaken this week.  Everything I knew to be true about life is a lie.  I have five children.  I could have stopped after two if I’d known the Mother Competition is an EMBARRASSMENT and not a sought-after prize. 

What other long-held misconceptions do I have?  The next thing I know, she’ll be saying something else ridiculous like drinking alcohol won’t send me to Hell.