Making mom feel special on Mother’s Day this year will be more difficult than usual due to COVID-19. You can’t take her out for ice cream, or treat her with an evening out at her favorite restaurant. You can’t have friends and family over for a shared meal and game of Badminton in the yard. She can’t hug her parents, and she can’t, well… she can’t really go anywhere. It’s a challenge for sure. 

But, there are five things you can do to make mom feel special this Mother’s Day while you all shelter safely at home during this pandemic. 

Five Ways To Make Mom Feel Special During COVID-19

1. Get take-out from her favorite restaurant if it’s open. If it’s not open, find another one she loves. You can do this. When you bring the food home, wipe the containers with Clorox wipes, and put the food on plates using the hand that most recently touched the Clorox wipe. Do not ask her for help with this. The skin on her hands is already almost all-the-way gone from wiping groceries and doorknobs to keep you (and herself because who’s going to take care of you when she’s down with the coronavirus? Trust me – Dad will not use Clorox wipes as well as Mom.).

   For extra points, consider taking a video of you and Dad wiping the food containers off. Include footage of wiping the doorknob and the garage shutting-button with wipes too. You’ve been out in the world where corona blows around and lands in weird places and stuff. Or maybe the person who prepared our food recently sneezed, and is a shedder.

2. Put the dishes from your take-out meal into the dishwasher. Near the dishwasher isn’t the same, no matter how similar it looks.
3. Tell your mom her hair looks good. Yup, that’s it. Don’t say anything else. Seriously, just say “Mom, your hair looks nice today,” even if it looks like some weird band member’s hair from when she was a teenager or a reversed skunk with the white stripe in the middle. Keep that observation to yourself and use it later in writing stories or save it for therapy. Whatevs. 
4. Leave her the F@CK alone. Do this for at least two hours. Mommy loves you more than anything in the world, and she probably loves whoever else lives in your house a lot too. But. Once upon a time, not so long ago, there were days she had names for (Something like Monday or Thursday or um, something other than “day” anyway) when she was ALL BY HERSELF. Maybe in the car, maybe at her job, maybe even in your house while you were at school. She misses this, and having you ask “What’s for lunch?” on a weekday was fun for two days. It has NOT been fun since then.

   I mean, of course, she’s happy to fix your meals and show her love by squirting barbeque sauce next to your microwaved nuggets and she loves you more than anything, but once? She didn’t make lunch for anybody but herself at the actual time for lunch. She made your lunch before school and then happily dined on peanut-butter celery sticks ALONE.

5. Refrain from saying “I’m bored” for the entire day. Not even one time, when you’re more bored than you’ve ever been in your entire life. Like, do not say it at all (!) for the whole entire day.
   Er, um, that’s probably too hard. Sorry. How about this, instead. You already know that when you say “I’m bored,” Mom replies with stuff like “Well, Honey, Steve Jobs had some time on his hands and invented the iPod and the world as we know it, so go make something.” Duh. None of us are Steve Jobs and your mom knows it.

   What about this. Before saying “I’m bored,” ask yourself if there’s something you could do to have fun without Mom or even maybe clean up the toys all over the floor of your room. For real, clean up the toys on your floor. Your mom will kiss you and love you and forget about coronavirus for a few minutes. 

That’s it! Doing these simple five things for your mom on Mother’s Day will make her day better even during COVID-19. You will be her favorite, forever. Maybe, she’ll even have better ideas the next time you tell her you’re bored because we all know that you will. 

This has been a Finish the Sentence Friday post, with the prompt “Mother’s Day…”