If there’s a holiday that’s more of a Hallmark moment than Mother’s Day, I sure don’t know what it is.

Now, I don’t believe that Mother’s Day is wrong, mostly because we all need to be reminded every now and again to stop and take the time to thank our moms for all they do and for all they are. It’s just that-like so many aspects of our culture-this holiday easily gets a little over done thanks to advertising and merchandising. I also believe there are many good mothers who may be overlooked on Mother’s Day for whatever reason and easily end up feeling inadequate thanks to the hype that surrounds this day.

Now that Mother’s Day is just past again for another year, I checked last week with some of my middle school contacts to see if they had plans for their mom for Mother’s Day. It turned out that it was the boys, especially, who really weren’t much interested in a) making plans, or b) Mother’s Day. “I’m pretty sure my dad has something planned,” answered one young man when I asked him what would be going on in his family.

“I don’t have a clue,” answered another middle school boy without apology.

“I’ll come up with something,” said another boy about his Mother’s Day observance.

Even worse was the quizzical look of one teenager as he said, “Is it this weekend?”

The best response I got from the male set was a boy who told me about the service project his Boy Scout troop recently took on, to sell and clean bird feeders. So he had a couple of those ready for his mom for Mother’s Day.

The girls I talked to were more pro-active about this whole holiday, perhaps because they’re looking ahead to the possibility of being a mother themselves someday. “My family has other plans that day, but I’ll probably make a card for my mom and fix her breakfast,” one girl said.

When I asked a seventh grade girl who came for breakfast what she planned for Mother’s Day, she told me that she wouldn’t do anything. “My mom said she doesn’t care,” she reported to me with a shrug.

My favorite answer of all, though, came from an eighth grader who excitedly told me that she had nominated her mom in a radio station contest designed to find the best mom. “So I wrote about all the nice things she does for me,” she related to me as her breakfast cooled on her tray, “including coming to watch me at my track meets.”

Perhaps God has a special soft spot for all the bleacher-sitting moms. May He bless the rest of us, too, every one.