Source: Shutterstock

When you think about Mother’s Day and how celebrated the holiday is by all, is anything missing?

Next weekend, we’ll celebrate Father’s Day. We’ll spend a day among family and fathers and thank them for the gift of life and their contributions to our families (Or lack thereof…). We will gather around the dinner table and dad will get the big piece of chicken; the same one that he typically gets every Sunday at dinner. However, this piece of chicken will be “special.”

After dinner, we will go in the living room and let dad have the remote to watch what he would like to watch tonight. The remote that goes to the television that he probably bought, as he sits in the chair he likely bought too. He will open cards and share that moment with his children and maybe his children’s children.

Father’s Day is a point of reflection. While the holiday is much different in the amount of attention given to Mother’s Day, it’s because fathers are celebrated differently. Mothers are celebrated because of their gifts to us that they didn’t have to do. However, the best fathers are those who can make their contributions, those things they ought do, seamless.

There are those fathers who love, care, and provide for their children in a proud way, but many are silent givers. It’s only in reflection that we are able to see their contributions. We hope those reflections don’t happen postmortem; those are the worst. But somehow, we seem to miss those points in each of our perennial celebrations.

Ironically, as we merge the responsibilities of parenthood, due to need or modernization but most likely out of need, mothers are celebrated on Father’s Day. Your timeline will be filled with tweets, Facebook filled with status updates and pictures posted on Instagram of mothers who stood in the place of missing fathers. Let me be clear, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. There’s several mothers who did the job of two when there was only one around. And I applaud them.

But that is what’s missing from Mother’s Day — the same celebration that is given for mothers on Father’s Day, isn’t given to those single fathers on Mother’s Day.

While it’s easy to get frustrated at this occurrence and the contrast with Father’s Day, I know why it happens. It happens because when I think back on my dad and all the things that he did — all my dad asked for was that I say thank you and acknowledge him. He doesn’t like gifts; it’s usually bought with money he gave me or I guess now that I’m older that I probably owe him. He doesn’t want a whole lot of attention or affection, just a simple “Thanks dad.”

That doesn’t make Father’s Day a throwaway holiday or any less important, it just makes it different. Sometimes the difference causes us to confuse that with a feeling of less importance. If we’re guilty of forgetting the importance of Father’s Day, those are personal demons we all need to work through. If you’re having problems working through how you’d like to express your gratitude, think of how you’d approach the day if your father was absent. Try starting with an emulation of the way we thank and herald those who fill the role in that absence. That’s a good start.

WENN/Twitter

From The Grio

Earlier this month, boxer Floyd Mayweather was in the news for his (expected) triumph over boxing opponent Robert Guerrero. And last week, Mayweather, no stranger to attention seeking, made headlines again, but in a way he probably never expected.

On Mother’s Day, he paid a visit to his ex Josie Harris, who is mother to three of his four children. Harris has also appeared on the  reality show Starter Wives Confidential exposing her ongoing “relationship” with Mayweather, and on May 1 Harris gave an interview to Yahoo sports explaining that they’ve had “one intimate encounter” since he served time for assaulting her in front of their children.

This is also despite Mayweather’s engagement to another woman, Shantel Jackson, who lives with Mayweather. Anyway, Mayweather and Harris — recently it seems –  wound up in a bed together. As he slept, Harris snapped a picture of him that was posted to Instagram on Mother’s Day.

This, however, is not when things stop being crazy. Mayweather’s fiancee, who of course heard about the pictures, if not saw them, has not made a public statement about her fiancé being pictured in the bed with his ex. But she did offer a response, of sorts.

After Harris’s picture with Floyd surfaced, Jackson posted a mini-photo essay on Intsagram, documenting her life with Floyd. The images included a walk-in closet the size of a garage, a series of expensive designer bags displayed (and protected) like precious artifacts in a museum, and a vintage luxury vehicle. Media Takeout interpreted her images as a way of saying to Harris, “you may have his [p*nis], but I have his pockets.”

Read more at TheGrio.com

We hope your Mother’s Day with your mom and all the women in your life who have brought a child into the world was a beautiful one. And we know that celebrities had a ball too, because many of them posted pictures of their mothers over the years all over social media, and in the process, gave us a glimpse at them as children, and just some really cool throwback pictures. We collected some of our favorites and thought we’d share all the love they had to give to their mothers yesterday, and the cute photos that came with that. Enjoy!

Trey Songz

On his Instagram page yesterday, the R&B crooner posted a picture of his mother and himself as an infant in the early ’80s. He captioned the pic in a touching way, by calling his mother his “Favorite Lady.”

“My favorite lady. I’d be nothing without you and the sacrifices u made for me. Happy Mothers Day to you all.”

About This Episode

Just in case you want to celebrate Mom all month long, we brought back personal chef and owner of Remarkable Cuisine, LLC, Mark McLean to demonstrate one more tasty dish for us to prepare for Mom. With the help from our host, Karyn Parsons and father and daughter, Luis and Yuri, Chef Mark prepares Smoked Salmon Eggs Benedict with a bonus Creme Brulee desert. Yummy!

About Chef Mark McLean

Mark McLean is a personal chef and owner of Remarkable Cuisine, LLC.  Remarkable Cuisine is the culmination of Chef Marks 4 years of private chef services and experience in catering over 200  events. Through Remarkable Cuisine, Chef Mark displays his skill set and passion in the kitchen.  ”I am not here to present a standard or ordinary fare that is “good” or a “decent option”. I attack an ingredient, menu, and dish like the rest of things in my life — with a strong knowledge base and hard work that will make that dish shine,” as quoted by Chef Mark on his company’s website.  Chef Mark is committed to creating a unique and tasty experience in all his dishes, so you’re definitely in for another treat with his Smoked Salmon Eggs Benedict. 

Smoked Salmon Eggs Benedict

Ingredients:

1 8oz. package smoked salmon

Baby arugula

3 tbsp. olive oil

¼ bunch fresh parsley, chopped fine

3 tsp. white balsamic (or white) vinegar

4 slices wheat bread

4 eggs

2 tsp. capers, chopped fine

salt/pepper

1 tbsp. butter, soft

Let’s prepare our components of the benedict:

Fill a small sauce pan with about 4 inches of water and set over medium heat.

Cut the crust off the wheat bread slices to make a perfect square.

Spread the softened butter lightly on one side and set aside.

Open the package of salmon and take out 8 pieces, or enough to cover each piece of toast completely.

Set aside in the fridge until ready to use.

In a shallow bowl, add the olive oil, minced capers, parsley, and a pinch of salt.

Stir to combine and set aside.

Let’s cook:
Check that water is boiling. If it is, turn off the heat. If it is about to (gentle simmer) reduce heat as much
as possible. Add vinegar to the water. Crack an egg into a shallow dish, like a tea-cup. Using a spoon or
spatula, swirl the water in one direction, then add the egg from the shallow dish. We are going to let the
egg poach for about 4 minutes for a runny yolk (3 minutes longer for a tight yolk). Use a slotted spoon to
remove each egg and drain on a paper towel lined plate.
In a sauté pan set over medium heat, add our toast butter side down and let a crust form, about 2 minutes.

Let’s build our benedict. Remove toast from pan and set in the middle of the plate, toasted side down. On
top of that place our salmon in a flat layer. Grab a small bunch of arugula and place on top of the arugula.
Using a spoon, nestle a poached egg in the middle of the arugula. Salt and pepper the egg and arugula, then
spoon the caper oil over the egg and surrounding arugula.
Stand back and take a picture. Serve to Mom with fresh orange juice, the French toast and enjoy!

About Karyn Parsons

By j.n. salters

This letter is for my mother. Our mothers. Grandmothers. Aunts. Sisters. And all of the other black women who continue to raise black and brown warriors in this battlefield we call America. Who constantly find ways to make ends meet—in a world that continually fails to acknowledge your worth and beauty—just to keep smiles on our faces. To the only women who can grow roses from concrete. Turn scraps into Thanksgiving feasts. Who continue to love hard and wholeheartedly even when the world attempts to steal your joy. Still you rise.

I just want to say thank you. And that you are appreciated. Loved. Beautiful. Needed. I need you. WE NEED YOU. You deserve so much more than the words on this page. Than your lived realities. Than the media portrayals that negate your wonder. And caricature your splendor. Than the statistics that mock your circumstance. Ignoring your God-like abilities to raise invisible toy soldiers into Gabby Douglases and Quvenzhané Wallises. Turning forgotten flesh into souls on fire.

You deserve to have your faces carved into mountains. Plastered on dollar bills covering the faces of presidents who have stolen from you. Used your image against you. Lied to you. Made your plight invisible. You deserve to have your brown skin on every milk carton and news segment that privilege missing bodies that do not look like yours or your children’s. On the cover of every newspaper that fills its pages with stories of your fabricated inferiority. Leaving your existence in the margins. Near the end. At the back. We are Rosa Parks.

I wish everyone could see you from my eyes. Read the deep history embedded in your rich skin. The pigment of your imagination. The secrets that you hold in the arch of your back. How the sway of your hips creates masterpieces out of thin air. Reclaiming the fetishized movements of Sarah Baartman. How your thick-lipped words echo the endurance of Sojourner Truth. Ida B. Wells. Wilma Rudolph. Harriet Tubman. The everlasting effervescence of your soul that refuses to be broken. The miniature North Stars shining from your crescent-like eyes, leading us lost ones to freedom. Giving us the ability to dodge stray bullets. Dreams deferred. Project hallways turned Middle Passages.

I pray that they will someday see you. In me. In US.

With love,

One of your daughters

Mother’s Day is Sunday, and while it’s a day to celebrate mom and all she does, it’s also a good time to take a look at all she has to face to get it done.

FinancesOnline.com and Ruby Media Corporation have compiled an infographic with a variety of stats that show some of the socioeconomic hardships black mothers face in the US. For example, according to the graphic, “Black American mothers tend to have more uninsured children than whites and Asians but not Hispanics.”

“Some may find the infographic uncomfortably touching on race issue this Mother’s Day—a happy day for all mothers—but this story presents an opportunity to address an age-old social inequity that extends to this day,” the site says.

We have the full infographic below. Is there anything here that you find shocking?

Source: Shutterstock

I used to climb into my mom’s bed and hand her my little green library copy of “Jemima Puddleduck” early in the mornings and make her read it to me over and over again. My mom used to take me to the department stores, stand me up in the parking lot when she realized I hadn’t really washed my face like I told her, lick a finger and wipe away the juice that stained my face. My mom used to take me to the park and let me gawk at the same peacock and ducks I gawked at the previous weekend and the weekends before that.

Those were my fondest memories of my mother for a long time. Somewhere between those early years and adulthood, though, I loosened my grip on her hand and we lost each other. Sure, we were living in the same house and going to church together every Sunday. And yes, we sat down to dinner together some nights. But a disconnect happened somewhere around the sixth grade and grew through my early twenties. It grew to the point that our words were painfully few. We did not know each other anymore. We did not play. We stopped going to parks and she did not read to me anymore. I did not care about her life and she seemed not to care too much about mine. I waited for the day I could move out and leave her behind because there was no love here anymore. Fine.

The factors leading to our separation were many, fear of judgment being chief among them. Growing up in a severely judgmental family will turn recluse even the most outgoing person if they have no outlet. I was headed toward seclusion even away from my mother as result and she threw up her hands, tired of trying to figure me out. We barely spoke. Laughter between us was almost nonexistent. We were broken. Badly.

It would take a series of scary and painful events to get us back to one another. My mother undergoing major surgery to save her life last year, would be the first. Instead of running away from her, I forgot any misunderstandings of the past and wanted nothing but to care for her during her three-month recovery. During that time, my mom realized she could trust me and I rediscovered her capacity to be soft and understanding.

Since that time, the growth in our relationship, not just as mother and daughter but as friend and confidant has been staggering. There was a time when I knew so little about my own mother that birthdays and Mother’s Days were a chore because I had no idea what she liked, what excited her, and what would make her smile. There was a time when she would never disclose details about her humble upbringing for fear that I would judge her or think less of her. There was a time when I was afraid to be honest with my mother about my dreams, fears and screws ups because it seemed she perpetually wore a scowl.

That was then.

It took almost losing her January 2012 for me to really open up and understand just how important communication is on both sides in order to make a mother/daughter relationship work. It took a little more reaching out on my part when she was down, a little more listening on her part when I had difficult choices to make – to cultivate a bond that had been malnourished for so long.

Life is too short for missed opportunities, cold shoulders and misplaced anger when it comes to our mothers. No they are not perfect, as we are not either, but that bond is sacred. Seek it out if it has been lost in the shuffle of everyday life. Unfold it from the back corners of your heart. Be the catalyst for strengthening what was weak if you can be. I know that without my mother, I would never see the world the way I do. I wouldn’t know inspiration like I do. I wouldn’t laugh as frequently as I do. And I wouldn’t know the amazing feeling of redeemed relationship with such clarity and gratitude.

It took a near-death experience to bring my mother and I back together but it does not always have to be that way. Years of lost time in a relationship with my mother has taught me, no matter what has happened or how much time has gone by, there is nothing so far gone that God cannot restore.

Peace to all the mothers who have birthed generations.

Peace to their daughters who carry with them lessons learned and ones waiting to be learned.

Peace to my mother who, daily, provides an example of an ordinary woman allowing God to use her for extraordinary things.

May we all find our way together.

La Truly seeks to encourage thought, discussion and change. Follow her on Twitter: @AshleyLaTruly.

Shutterstock

Mother’s Day is just a few days away. If you haven’t already done so by now (and you know you should have), you’ve already purchased a nice gift, along with the bouquet of flowers, candy and cards designed to express in one day the person many of us take for granted during most of the other 364 days of the year. That’s okay. Most will appreciate the gifts and will love you just the same. That said, cards are eventually discarded (or stored away in the limbo of attics and basements), candy is eaten (most of it by you, likely as not) and flowers will wilt and die. (Please tell me you didn’t buy plastic ones.)

As for the gifts, Mom will likely be thrilled with the clothes, shoes, jewelry and night out at that fancy restaurant you have planned for her. (You’re not really going to let her cook, are you?) However, your mother has probably spent your entire life investing in you. Mother’s Day is a great time to return the favor, by thinking of gifts that will not just celebrate her for the day, but that will literally enrich her life.

Thinking about giving mom some personal finance guidance for Mother’s Day? Click through to Black Enterprise to learn more about how to help her out.

Shutterstock

With Mother’s Day fast approaching comes the news that if moms actually earned a salary for all the work they do around the house and with the kids, they’d be getting less in their paycheck this year. According to  new study, the take-home pay that a mother would earn for doing everything from cooking to handling the family finances would total $59,862 if she were paid on the open market.  Insure.com’s analysis of government data on hourly wages in its annual Mother’s Day Index found that a mother’s earning would drop, down from $60,182 in 2012 and $61,436 in 2011.

The decrease is in line with the typical wages for some domestic jobs, which have also fallen, Amy Danise, a spokeswoman for Insure.com, told Today.  The Mother’s Day Index looks at 14 jobs that moms might perform, such as cooking, driving, cleaning and taking care of the kids, and then compared this to the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data for those tasks. It’s worth noting that mothers put in significantly more than the 40 hours of an average work week.

Other economists have taken an even more in-depth look at the value of housework. A government report released last year by the Bureau of Economic Analysis revealed that adding “nonmarket household production” to the nation’s gross domestic product would have raised nominal GDP by 39 percent in 1965 and 26 percent in 2010, reports Today. This would include jobs such as cooking, cleaning and child care that both men and women do around the house.

“The decline in the contribution to GDP is because the hours women spent on housework fell from 40 hours per week in 1965 to 26 hours per week in 2010, and more women entered the paid workforce,” writes Today. This, however, more than offset the increase, from 14 hours in 1965 to 17 hours per week in 2010, that men spent on domestic tasks.

That’s a lot of numbers, but it means that mom is busy and she’s working hard. How much do you think a mother’s work is worth?

Shutterstock

Mother’s Day is almost here, a great time to continue to celebrate the great loves of our lives: our mothers. While mothers and grandmothers are being celebrated, let’s not forget to acknowledge the moms-to-be this Spring!

Wish the expectant mother-to-be in your life a great pre-Mother’s Day on her behalf with a great gift to help her along her pregnancy, and to let her know that she’s celebrated too!

And here’s some more Mother’s Day help, here, and here.