How we kept Mother's day
(retold from Stephen Leacock)
So we decided to have a special celebration of Mother's Day. We wanted to make it a great day and do everything we could to make Mother happy. Father decided to take a holiday from his office, so as to help in celebrating the day, and my sister Anne and I stayed home from college classes, and Mary and my brother Will stayed home from High School. According to our plan to make a holiday for our mother just like Christmas, we decided to decorate the house with flowers and all that kind of thing. So we got mother to arrange the decorations, because she always does it during the holidays.
We have only one maid, and mother is busy in the house nearly all the time. So to give mother a surprise, father hired a motor car to take her for a beautiful drive away into the country. But on the very morning of the day, we changed our plan a little bit. Father said that it would be better to take mother fishing and that he had just got a new rod the day before. So we got everything arranged for the trip, and we asked mother to cut up some sandwiches in case we got hungry. However, we planned to come back home again to a big dinner in the middle of the day, just like at Christmas or on New Year's Day.
When the car came to the door, it turned out that there is a room only for five people. Father said that he could stay at home.
But of course we understood that it would be unfair to let father stay at home. The two girls, Anne and Mary, could stay and help the maid
cook dinner. But the day was lovely and they were wearing new hats. Will and I could stay at home too, but unfortunately we were useless at
making dinner.
So in the end it was decided that mother would stay home and just have a lovely restful day round the house, and cook the
dinner. Mother didn't care for fishing anyway, and though it was lovely and sunny, Father was rather afraid that mother might catch cold if
she came.
So we all, except for mother, drove away and we had a lovely day up among the hills.
It was quite late when we got back, nearly
seven o'clock in the evening, but mother kept back the dinner to have it ready and hot for us.
We sat down to the grandest kind of dinner − roast turkey and all sorts of things like on Christmas Day. Mother had to get up and down a good bit during the meal fetching things back and forward. The dinner lasted a long while, and was great fun. When it was over, all of us wanted to help clear up and wash the dishes. But then we let mother do it. It was quite late when it was all over. When we all kissed mother before going to bed, she said it had been the most wonderful day in her life, and I think there were tears in her eyes. So we all felt proud of all that we had done.