The Silver Surfer teaches a Mother's Day Lesson

I suppose I was setting myself up for disappointment when I told my six-year-old to go get dressed and didn't include specific instructions about the sartorial guidelines I expected him to follow on Mother's Day.

On any other day, particularly the school mornings when it's all I can do to get myself and my flailing toddler into street clothes, the fact that Luca managed to get dressed in under five minutes would have been cause for a minor celebration. HOWEVER, I am very Brasilian in some ways, one of them being that I am slightly neurotic about how my kids are presented to the world, especially on a day that is supposed to be all about ME, and for a party at which all the little girls will have on pretty toile dresses. I would like my boys to measure up in the threads department, you know what I'm saying?

So when Luca came downstairs in a Silver Surfer orange tee, and frayed jeans, and proudly showed off his having dressed himself so competently and efficiently, what could I do but smile wanly and offer up praise for the speedy change from pajamas?

Except then I remembered the impending onslaught of toile, and tentatively suggested to Luca that he either put on a nicer shirt or fancier pants. Sensing the weakness in my voice, my six-year-old, who was perfectly happy, as he should be on any day OTHER than Mother's Day, with his choice of clothing, very strongly and in short order declared he was fine with what he was wearing and we should get going to Stellie's house. Having the excuse of not being quite done getting myself or the resident floundering two-year-old ready, I said in a slightly more insistent tone that he should seriously reconsider his tee or his jeans and that I would prefer him to don something nicer for Mother's Day.

It was a no-go.

I even tried to explain the vagaries of a quid pro quo, going so far as to suggest that should he ask something of me in the future, near or far, that he should not be shocked if I declined to fulfill his request.

Still a no-go.

I tried one last-ditch effort, as now we were getting dangerously close to being late, and if there's anything that irritates me more than being improperly attired, it is arriving late to someone's house for a celebration. I asked that, for me, for his Mother, on this Mother's Day, that my son switch to something more appropriate for a Mother's Day dinner.

Again, I must have tipped my hate-to-be-late-hand a bit too far, because my underdressed son turned to me and asked, in a not-quite-whiny voice, "But Mamae, what does Mother's Day have to do with fancy?"

And for that, dear reader, I had no good answer at the ready.

So my now-finally-dressed thrashing toddler and I headed downstairs and out of the house, with the Silver Surfer happily bounding along at my side. Beat-up sneakers and all.

Happy Mother's Day, he said. And he meant it with all his heart.

So I did - have a happy Mother's Day, I mean. And decided that the clothing does not a good mother make. Choosing my battles does.