Sounding Off:

In 1914, six years before women attained the national right to vote, President Woodrow Wilson officially declared the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day in the United States. Much has changed since then, including the dynamics of motherhood. An ever-increasing number of women with careers outside of the home require fathers to assume or participate in domestic duties and child-rearing responsibilities once considered predominantly maternal. Even pregnancy, the precursor to motherhood, has been somewhat redefined. There was a time not so long ago when expecting couples would excitedly announce, “We’re having a baby!”

How can that be, I wonder? Getting there may be half the fun, but after getting there, isn’t pregnancy pretty much like driving a car — only one person in the driver’s seat at a time? Perhaps I’m a bit cynical, but at some point in the future, will this same couple readily exclaim, “We’re having prostate surgery,” “We have ED,” or “We have male pattern baldness”? Not likely. Pregnancy can be a shared experience, but only so far. Fathers pollinate, but it’s the mothers who gestate, incubate, lactate and wind up prostrate in the process of procreation.

Dad may be able to feel the baby kick from the outside, but like an armchair quarterback, he’s not feeling the real grind of the gridiron. Unless he already possesses the physical characteristics of a Volkswagen, daddy probably won’t assume the shape of one over a period of nine months, or suffer the agony of morning sickness, or be subject to a gastronomic craving so intense as to drive him from a nice warm bed at midnight in search of tutti-frutti ice cream and pickled onions, except to accommodate the “pregnantee.” Behold the evolution to motherdom!

While serving in the military years ago, I had my first opportunity to witness the miracle of birth in an Army hospital. It was truly an eye-opening experience: the heavy breathing, the groaning, the profuse sweating, the gnashing of teeth, the facial grimacing, ultimately culminating in sheer exhaustion. And that was my reaction! Compared with the mother’s ordeal, I would have rather been interrogated by the Gestapo. To think that billions of us came into the world that way! Mothers not only deserve their day of recognition, but probably a few medals to boot.

One year, near Mother’s Day, I entered a floral shop here in Huntington Beach. I approached a young girl working behind the counter and requested her assistance in wiring some flowers to my mother, who lived in Oklahoma City.

After I selected an arrangement from the floral catalog, the young lady asked, “What do you want on the card?” I replied, “To the world’s greatest mother. Love, Steve.”

When I returned home that evening and activated my answering machine, I heard my mother’s sweet voice say, “Hi, Steve. This is Mom. I got your lovely flowers today. They’re absolutely gorgeous, but the card said ‘To the world’s greatest lover’.” I could hear my father shouting in the background, “Steve, go get your own girl and leave mine alone!” Something had definitely been lost in the translation between here and Oklahoma City.

My parents are both gone now, but I’ll always remember that Mother’s Day and many others that my sisters and I shared with the beautiful, loving, caring woman who brought us into this exciting journey and made us proud to call her Mom.

To the nation’s mothers, Sunday is your day. Enjoy it. Happy Mother’s Day!

STEVE OLIM is a Huntington Beach resident.