At the Personalist Project: A Singular Mother’s Day

Today at the Personalist Project, I’m writing about Anna Jarvis and the founding of Mother’s Day, and what we can learn about love from the placement of an apostrophe. 

“Anna Jarvis was never able to put the genie of Mother’s Day back in the bottle. This weekend, mothers everywhere will get store-bought cards and flowers, bought on sale or as fundraisers. There will be encomiums delivered at pulpits and from stages about the ideal of motherhood and what it means to us. Whether or not the apostrophe lands in front of the s, the day itself has become plural: a day when journalists and commentators sit at their keyboards to talk about motherhood in general and what it means today.

But I still think there is something for each of us to take away from the story of Anna Jarvis and her insistence on the singular possessive form of “Mother’s Day.” Love gains in strength and becomes concrete, becomes realized, when it is personal…”

Read the rest at The Personalist Project