She tried it a few times but isn't able to type at a pace that she thinks she should be able and therefore just stopped. She constantly complains that she doesn't have the relationship she would like to have with me, yet won't do anything to make it so. I explained to her how quick, easy and great email is because we can keep in touch on a daily basis. Also, you can send pictures, music, world wide anecdotes, etc. But, no. She's not comfortable doing email which is odd, because one of her "goals" when she retires is to buy a computer so she can email. (???)

I guess it's not that unusual a mindset, considering that in March she and I made plans for her to visit me for a few days (we live on opposite coasts) the last week of April. April came and went - no Mom. May came and went - no word from Mom. June arrived and I called home to wish my Dad a Happy Birthday, Mom answered the phone - no word about the trip. When I asked her what happened and why she never arrived, her response was: "I must have been drunk because I would never agree to come out and visit."

So Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Who knows, maybe one day you'll figure out why you don't have the relationship you want to have with your son.

My Mom's e-mails, even if she's writing every day, are extremely long and detailed. I appreciate the effort and always look forward to them.

The e-mails from my Dad are most treasured though. He can't hear well and never liked talking on the phone. We've had some wonderful exchanges over the last 10 years.

My mother-in-law is quite a woman. She took to email like a duck to water. We got her an iPhone after she ruined her last phone and she immediately set to putting her harp music on it and now 'tex mex's' both of us. She has tried to master the camera and sending pictures too. She's nearly 70 and still likes (appreciates?) her Windows PC. We tried to get her on a Mac but she said that it took her so long to get the pc down that her brain doesn't have room for anything else.

She does quite well for someone who's last computer programming class was done with punch cards...

Her emails are a trip. We are trying to save them for posterity...

My moms can't/won't get it down and I don't know why. (I have 2, birth and adopted who passed away a few years ago)

For my mum, emails don't count. She expects a hand-written letter every week or so, and a phone call on any special event. She doesn't get either, so sorry.

She emails me pretty much every other day though. And I email back within minutes, usually. She prints them all out to read. She's got a whole pile of boxes of my printed out emails she keeps as keepsakes. She's still after me to write her a letter though.

I do love her dearly. She is a remarkable woman, in her 70s and getting a second Bachelor's degree, simply because she feels like it. She led a wild-cat women's strike in the lab she worked at in the early 50s, for equal pay for equal work. And won. She's a little embarrassed about it to this day, but also still angry about it, to this day.

And people ask where I got my feminism from!

re: But more than mere mockery, the letters are a tribute to the adorable and exasperating quirkiness that make moms, well, moms.

The best we're able to do with our moms, then, is laugh them off? How about, instead: do better--your efforts cause me pain, and I deserve better.

who sees this note "You were welcome to stay in my uterus for nine months, and then my house for 17 years. But I understand, a week at your apartment might be a bit … much" not so much "the adorable and exasperating quirkiness" Hepola finds but more a message of anger and hurt?

And the letter writer who waited until June to check up on a mother who failed to arrive for a visit in April . . .

How many more generations is it going to take to get a handle on our attitudes toward mothers?

My mother is severely mentally ill, so much so that she's been hospitalized regularly since I was in my teens. She now requires care, supervision and financial support, as thanks to the twenty years she spent as a SAHM, she doesn't have much by way of a pension or Social Security. She forgot my son's birthday, and will probably forget mine.

What I've come to realize over time is that my mother's life isn't about me. It isn't supposed to be, and never was. Nothing could ever cure her, and the idea that she should have been prevented from having children would have denied not just me life, but my son as well, not to mention my siblings.

Expecting one's mother to do whatever one wants is a holdover from toddlerhood. You're supposed to grow out of that. Maybe it's easier for me, since my mother is so clearly insane, but I'm happy when she's not trying to kill herself. Forgetting my birthday isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, never mind not answering e-mail she knows perfectly well how to use.

I have unlimited long distance on my phone. So she doesn't like e-mail, and for no sane reason? I can call. It's no big deal.

And I will. I'm really crappy about sending cards, so when holidays roll around, I tend to call. Thankfully, my friends and family know this about me and don't bitch.

In the meantime, I'd like to suggest that we figure out, as a culture, how to get the heck over ourselves where our mothers are concerned. It's as if we have this template of Perfect Mother in our heads, and reject anything that doesn't match up, whether it's an elderly woman feeling uncomfortable with new technology, or communications about plans gone awry. I'd also suggest that we learn to laugh more, not in a mean way, but in the way that erases bitterness and lingering anger. So Mom isn't exactly to our personal specifications? Guess what? That's life. We can stew in our misery, or we can live.

Later tonight, I'll call my heavily medicated, chronically suicidal, hopelessly delusional mother, and we'll have a great conversation about the odd but sometimes delightful things that an insane but intelligent mind enjoys. And I do learn from it. My mother, in her craziness, taught me an appreciation for things that most people ignore.

My mother is not about me. Once I figured that out, we got along fine.