How We Kept Mother’s Day

Canadian writer Stephen Leacock is best known for his immortal Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, published in 1912. His delightfully humorous pieces often appeared in Reader’s Digest magazine. Leacock died in 1944 and his work is now in the public domain.

One year our family decided to have a special celebration of Mother’s Day, as a token of appreciation for all the sacrifices that Mother had made for us. After breakfast we had arranged, as a surprise, to hire a car and take her for a beautiful drive in the country. Mother was rarely able to have a treat like that, because she was busy in the house nearly all the time.

But on the very morning of the day, we changed the plan a little, because it occurred to Father that it would be even better to take Mother fishing. As the car was hired and paid for, we might as well use it to drive up into the hills where the streams are. As Father said, if you just go driving you have a sense of aimlessness, but if you are going to fish there is a definite purpose that heightens the enjoyment.

So we all felt it would be nicer for Mother to have a definite purpose; and anyway, Father had just got a new fishing rod the day before, which he said Mother could use if she wanted to; only Mother said she would much rather watch him fish than try to fish herself.

So we got her to make up a sandwich lunch in case we got hungry, though of course we were to come home again to a big festive dinner.

Well, when the car came to the door, it turned out that there wasn't as much room in it as we had supposed, because we hadn’t reckoned on Father’s fishing gear and the lunch, and it was plain that we couldn’t all get in.

Father said not to mind him, that he could just as well stay home and put in the time working in the garden. He said that we were not to let the fact that he had not had a real holiday for three years stand in our way. He wanted us to go right ahead and not to mind him.

But of course we all felt that it would never do to let Father stay home. The two girls, Anna and Mary, would have stayed and gotten dinner, only it seemed such a pity to, on a lovely day like this, having their new hats. But they said that Mother had only to say the word and they’d gladly stay home and work. Will and I would have dropped out, but we wouldn’t have been any use in getting the dinner.