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For a mother, just one Mother's Day isn't enough!

I've been in the United States for a decade. I was married when I came here and now I'm a mother of a very naughty, very active two-and-half-year-old. So I qualify for the greeting card or the gift or both for the Mother's Day as hyped by the advertising of literally hundreds of stores.

In my eyes, it's all overdone. Please don't get me wrong. I'll be the first to admit that motherhood is hard, demanding, challenging and excruciatingly exhausting, and that rewards are welcome and deserved. But I firmly believe that one day of constant attention is simply not enough -- I want more.

I want to be respected, cared for, remembered and loved every day. I'll settle for one nice gesture, one kind thing said and lots of hugs and kisses but often. I don't want to be relegated to the background and bought out for one day, dusted, applauded and put back on the shelf.

That's my biggest complaint with this Mother's Day thing -- it's all temporary, the sales, the perfume and the gifts and at the stroke of midnight it's all gone. It's reached ridiculous heights. Suddenly, every ordinary thing in every store, retailers realize, can be commercialized for Mother's Day. There are "toasters" for Mom, an "oil tune-up for Mom's car," a "scanner for Mom's computer," a "lunch buffet" for Mom, a "gift certificate to a beauty salon" for Mom -- need I go on?

But that isn't true of the Indian culture. I didn't have a "Mother's Day" while growing up in Calcutta, India, but I remember lots of close, loving moments with my mother without any gifts. In fact, I can mostly recall the idea that we repay our parents -- both our parents -- by respecting and caring for them for a lifetime.

It was also something that was a given. It wasn't something of a red balloon, flowers and candy and an excessive show of love for one day. We were also not encouraged to buy gifts and things because we were "younger" and it is "the duty of the elders to care for the young," etc etc.

I'm not as shocked as I used to be when I first came here. But it still saddens me when friends I went to college with confess that though they rarely call their mothers, they make sure that they do so on Mother's Day, just because "it's a nice thing to do."

I don't want my son to do that. I want him to be a part of my life, forever. I find that cynical. And I can't imagine why that isn't true to all mothers all over the world.

I have to agree that raising a child here is a lot more work. We don't have the luxury of leaving our children with their grandparents on Saturday nights to pay a quick visit to Taj to check out the local scene. Here, we wash dishes, mop the kitchen floor, wipe food stains off the wall, sort out laundry and then maybe drink a cup of milk before we can join our kids in dreamland. In India, mothers have a lot of help. But the sacrifices are the same. There are talented women in both countries that decide to stay home with the kids and delay the return to their careers until they are sure their kids are ready.

We all strive for excellence in our kids. We do the same things. We try to be calm, patient and instil the best qualities in our children. And we permanently walk around with a piece of our hearts ripped out as the children grow bigger and form their own identity.

To be a mother is to belong to a special clique. The rewards are abstract. It's feelings like joy, pride, fear, anxiety, tenderness and care that only another mother can understand -- sometimes you can share that with the father, if you're lucky enough to share a special bond like I do.

The feeling -- that flutter in your stomach when your baby coos and smiles at you, that sense of achievement when your toddler takes his step, the giddy, irrational ecstasy when he speaks and says, "I love you, Mama" -- these are things only other mothers know.

I live for those moments. I'm lucky and blessed (no that doesn't even come close to describing but it will have to do) that my son was born to me.

I love him every minute of the day. I'm ambitious for him. I plan, I dream and hope very big things for him. I pray that life and this world treat him with dignity and honor and grant him greatness.

I don't want or expect the same things from my son. But I do know this -- one day in a year isn't enough.

The author is based in Albany, New York. She has been published in, among others, Newsday.

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