Those three little words

The vagaries of the calendar dictated more last minute running around yesterday than might normally be expected the Saturday before Mother's Day. It is, after all, only May 8. The second Sunday in May, the day set aside to honor mothers, can't come any earlier than this.
Still, we trust, every loving son and daughter found a few minutes to find something for Mom. Those mothers who receive supermarket bouquets bought on the way over (with price stickers still attached) should simply remind themselves that in the good old days, before blue laws were repealed and supermarkets incorporated flower shops, their procrastinating offspring would have showed up empty-handed and embarrassed.
Things have changed -- in lots of ways.
Just take television mothers. We've gone from Harriet Nelson and June Cleaver to the line-up on "Desperate Housewives," which includes overextended Lynette Scavo, flaky Susan Mayer, super-controlling Bree Van De Kamp and reluctant soon-to-be-mom Gabrielle Solis (who is pregnant only because her husband tampered with her pills -- and doesn't know if he or the yard boy is the father).
Statistically speaking
Or just take the statistics.
The U.S. Census Bureau points out that the 21st century mother is not the mother that Anna Jarvis knew when she successfully campaign for that first Mother's Day in 1908.
The 82.5 million mothers in the United States today have smaller families, with two children on average. Only 10 percent of women bear four or more children, compared with 36 percent in 1976. And mothers are having their first child later, at just over 25 years old. There are 4 million new mothers each year. About 425,000 of them teenagers between 15 and 19, but more than 100,000 are 40 or older.
In 1976, when the Census first began counting mothers with infant children in the workforce, the figure was 31 percent. Today it is 55 percent, down slightly from a record 59 percent in 1998.
But no matter how mothers may change statistically, one thing never changes. They all deserve to hear these three words: Happy Mother's Day!