This Mother’s Day, Momma Needs A Nap

            This Sunday is that special annual day when we tell the Mommas of America just how much we love them by sending them flowers and greeting cards that say, “To Momma, on her special day . . . Now what’s for dinner?”

            Well, with all due respect to the florists and greeting card industry, let me respectfully suggest that on this Mother’s Day, Momma needs something more than flowers and cards.

            What Momma needs is a nap.

            Better yet, she needs a vacation, or maybe even a sabbatical.  But let’s start with a nap.

            It’s time for the husbands and children of America to face this simple truth:  Momma is exhausted.  She’s pooped.  She’s plain old tuckered out.

            Why?  For the same reason Lincoln was exhausted during the Civil War.  For the same reason Churchill needed naps during World War II.  She’s been working herself to death.

            In the 21st century, your typical American mom is working three shifts a day.  She’s up  at dawn, fixing breakfast (Southern Mommas didn’t cook breakfast, they fix it), getting the kids fed and dressed, and off to school.

            From 9 to 5 she’s at the office, beating deadlines, sitting through boring conference calls, sending and receiving e-mails, and making sure bidness gets done, because Momma means bidness.

            And then at the end of a stress-filled day, Momma comes home to fix dinner (again, she doesn’t cook it, she fixes it), clean house, bathe the kiddies, pay bills on-line, and serve as an academic consultant on homework assignments.

            On the seventh day, God rested.  But not Momma.  On weekends, she becomes Momma- the-chauffeur, shuttling kids between church services, soccer games and scout meetings.

            June Cleaver no longer spends her days walking around the house wearing a dress and pearls while waiting for Ward to come back from the office and Wally and Beaver to come home from school.

            In fact, according to the latest national survey, nearly 25 percent of American moms don’t even have a Ward Cleaver.  He either left shortly after conception or later ran off with a trophy wife.

            And even in those households where Ward Cleaver is alive and well (or at least present), Momma still heads for the office every day.  Does she do it for the glamour of an exciting and challenging career?  Not hardly.  She does it because these days, middle-class American families need two incomes to make ends meet.

            So this Sunday, let’s do something really special for Momma.  I say it’s time for us menfolk to get our lazy fannies up off our couches and clean up the house while Momma takes a nap.

            I say it’s time for dear old Dad to pile the kids in the SUV and spend Sunday afternoon at the cinema watching an outstanding motion picture such as “Rambo Meets Sponge Bob” while Momma spends the afternoon enjoying a little peace and quiet.  And then, next Sunday, we can declare that it’s Mother’s Day again, and give her another day off.  In fact, we can declare that there will be Mother’s Day one day a week, 52 weeks a year.

            Momma is too nice to admit it, but she’d gladly exchange her flowers and greeting cards for a nice long nap.