Mother's Day
Dear Children,
It is fortunate that you live in Canada and that your mother was away for Mother's Day, travelling in Peru. It is Mother's Day in Peru today as well. If you were a Peruvian son or daughter, it seems there are some expectations placed upon you on Mother's Day.
In the morning of Mother's Day, go out and buy a huge bouquet of flowers. Not to worry about finding some flowers as flowers are sold on every street corner. You will need to buy a very large bunch and oh, while you are at it, pick up one of those red balloons tied to straws that say Feliz Madre Dia. Well, actually, get three of four. Boxes of chocolates and galletas (cookies) usually accompany the flowers and balloons.
Then, take a crowded city bus to the city where your mother dwells, find your mother, board another bus and take her to a giant restaurant, festooned with balloons, tables laid with white linen and event tents scattered on the lawn. Purchase a cuy (guinea pig) plato, broiled out on sticks over the coals for your mother. She will love this delicacy and it is fitting on this auspicious day, Mother's Day, to indulge her in the local delicacy.
Now children, due to these rigorous rituals and expectations placed upon you on Mother's Day, you might begin harbouring a wish that your mother was dead, This won't help to avoid the expectations.
If I am dead, you will have to pick up the same flowers and balloons and head to the huge cemetery in Lurin, a district thirty minutes outside of Lima, where it seems that most of the mothers in the past one hundred years have been buried.
There, you can arrange and braid the flowers into a wreath at my gravesite and leave the balloons stuck into the grass. Bring along that cuy lunch and join the hundreds of families who are having a picnic, munching guinia pig over their mother's grave plot.
I shall be bringing home some of these expectations, incorporating them into our own Mother's Day rituals.
I'll skip the cuy. A kiss will do.
I love you all. Mom
It is fortunate that you live in Canada and that your mother was away for Mother's Day, travelling in Peru. It is Mother's Day in Peru today as well. If you were a Peruvian son or daughter, it seems there are some expectations placed upon you on Mother's Day.
In the morning of Mother's Day, go out and buy a huge bouquet of flowers. Not to worry about finding some flowers as flowers are sold on every street corner. You will need to buy a very large bunch and oh, while you are at it, pick up one of those red balloons tied to straws that say Feliz Madre Dia. Well, actually, get three of four. Boxes of chocolates and galletas (cookies) usually accompany the flowers and balloons.
Then, take a crowded city bus to the city where your mother dwells, find your mother, board another bus and take her to a giant restaurant, festooned with balloons, tables laid with white linen and event tents scattered on the lawn. Purchase a cuy (guinea pig) plato, broiled out on sticks over the coals for your mother. She will love this delicacy and it is fitting on this auspicious day, Mother's Day, to indulge her in the local delicacy.
Now children, due to these rigorous rituals and expectations placed upon you on Mother's Day, you might begin harbouring a wish that your mother was dead, This won't help to avoid the expectations.
If I am dead, you will have to pick up the same flowers and balloons and head to the huge cemetery in Lurin, a district thirty minutes outside of Lima, where it seems that most of the mothers in the past one hundred years have been buried.
There, you can arrange and braid the flowers into a wreath at my gravesite and leave the balloons stuck into the grass. Bring along that cuy lunch and join the hundreds of families who are having a picnic, munching guinia pig over their mother's grave plot.
I shall be bringing home some of these expectations, incorporating them into our own Mother's Day rituals.
I'll skip the cuy. A kiss will do.
I love you all. Mom
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