I created a very brief text message on my cell phone that said something like “Happy Mothers Day. Don’t forget to call your Mom today!” Meant to be a mass text message to my friends, I soon found that I faced more than the usual problems in selecting recipients from my contact list.

Normally, the stroll (scroll?) through my contacts list to choose who will receive the text message only involves fairly innocuous decisions like “is this the person’s cell phone number?” and “is this someone I even know or did I just get his number in a bar?” But this time, things were a little different - and perhaps a little too revealing about who I am.

In suggesting to my friends that they should call their mothers on Mother’s Day, I also had to decide which ones even have living mothers. Being required to use this filter brought me face to face with my own age - on the brink of 40.

The second filter I had to employ for my friends was “is this person on good speaking terms with his mother?” It may be no surprise that most of my friends are gay men or lesbian women. Filtering my “Mother’s Day Reminder Message” list made me realize how common it is for people in our community to lose touch or willingly cut off ties to our birth mothers.

We often find our own, new “moms” to help us out along the path of life. Maybe because our own mothers are no longer on this earth or maybe because our lives may have turned out to be so different from what they wanted that we had to part ways. No matter who your “mom” is, this is the day to give her a call.

Oh yeah, if you can make a call or pledge a contribution to PFLAG too, that would be cool!

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