Daily Dose of English 42
Mother's Day
Daily Dose of English 42
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day, especially to all of you listening who are mothers. We have a special day in a lot of countries, I think, but specifically here in the U.S. is where I know it from, is a day to celebrate our mothers, all of the mothers in the world. And it always happens on a Sunday. I think in other countries it might happen on a Friday, but we always celebrate it on a Sunday in May. I think it's usually the second Monday or Sunday, so I'm not actually positive though on that, but it is always on a Sunday, that I do know for sure. And Mother's Day is a day where we celebrate and think about and talk to our mothers. And so I want to take today to talk about the holiday as well as some typical traditions and things that people do and a little bit about my memories of Mother's Day and what I like to do on Mother's Day. But one thing I will say at the very beginning, I hope that you think about your mother today and call her and say, hi, mom. You're great. I love you. And then you can continue talking if you want, but having a baseline of just saying hi to your mom and maybe even telling her that, hey, did you note that today in the United States is Mother's Day? if you're listening to this the day that it comes out. If you're listening to it a different day, maybe don't say that, but you can also still call her and say, hi mom, I love you. Anyways, talking about Mother's Day, it's not an official holiday where you get extra time off work or school or anything like that, since it always happens on a Sunday when you don't have school or work anyways in the US. But people do usually celebrate it by doing things. A very common thing is to go out to brunch or to lunch or to breakfast. By the way, the word brunch is just a combination of breakfast and lunch, bruh from breakfast and unch from lunch. And brunch is typically in the later morning, so maybe around 11 a.m., and you go out to have brunch, maybe with your friends, family, or in this case, with your mother. Um, and it's a pretty common activity. The food is very similar to breakfast food, but usually a little bit heavier or with more, um, just more food in general or another common brunch. Um, another common thing to have at brunch is a mimosa, which is orange juice and champagne. And those can be mediocre or very, very good depending on where you get them or, or just how good they are there. Right. And so a lot of people go out to brunch with their moms on Mother's Day. Because of that, a lot of restaurants actually get totally booked on Mother's Day. And something is booked when there is no other space available. Let's say that you want to go to brunch with your mother. And so you call your favorite brunch restaurant and you say, hi, I'd like to make a reservation for 11 a.m. on Sunday. And they go, sorry, we're all booked. We have no other tables. That's Mother's Day. And it was booked two weeks ago. It was booked out weeks ago. You can even say booked out is when it's completely just full. There's nobody can come in. And it's pretty common for restaurants to be booked on big holidays like this, especially Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, because that's a specific day that people want to go to a nicer restaurant. And so they'll often make reservations well in advance, a couple of weeks or months in advance. And so if you want to go out to breakfast with your mom, either go somewhere that's really chill and maybe doesn't take reservations or isn't as fancy, or a simple coffee shop can be nice, or call weeks ahead of time. Those are all different options you can do. Or another fun option is to make brunch for your mom, especially if she lives nearby but not with you. You can surprise her by getting up early and making a lovely large brunch for her and maybe for your dad as well or whoever else is in your life. If you know other moms who don't have people that live in the same city or they don't have children that are close to help, that doesn't make sense. Or if they don't have children live in the same city, you can also invite them. That sentence got confusing. But having a bit of a Mother's Day party can be really nice. So food is very typical on Mother's Day. Gifts are sometimes, I don't think it's a super typical thing to give somebody a gift on Mother's Day, but if you have something in mind or you know that your mom wants something, it can often be a nice time to get her something, just because it's pretty easy to do. It's like, okay, I want to get her this anyways, might as well make it a Mother's Day gift, why not? And so you can give gifts that way. But it's not necessarily expected or required. However, flowers are very common. People give flowers to their mom or to other moms pretty often. It's because it's also springtime, and so there's lots of nice flowers out. And so flowers are a great little gift to give, especially if you're hosting brunch, because then you could put the flowers on the table, and they look really nice. We talked about flowers a couple of weeks ago, I think. And so if you want to go listen to that episode again, you can to freshen up on what kinds of flowers there are and how you give flowers or whatever I talked about. So we've talked about brunch, gift giving, and flowers. But what about mothers that are maybe a little bit older and their daughters are also mothers? So in a case like a grandmother. And it's very typical that they're involved, right? I know growing up, on Mother's Day, I always saw my grandma and my mom. It was a little bit of a different vibe or a different experience for the grandmother because, yes, they're also a mother, but their daughter is grown or is older. And so it doesn't quite function exactly the same. However, that doesn't mean that it shouldn't, right? A lot of grandmas would love a special gift or brunch or phone call. especially if they live alone or they don't necessarily live with the whole family or close by or whatever. And so I definitely recommend that you think of grandmothers as well or heaven forbid, great-great-grandmothers if you have a family member who's very old or maybe just have kids young. That's also possible, I guess. Anyways. Um, and then also younger mothers, right? They can often be forgotten because especially if they're single mothers and their child is pretty young, right? They can often be forgotten because people think about their own mothers more often than just another mother that exists. Right? And so if you have a friend who has a kid, um, reach out to her and say, Hey, happy mother's day. I'm glad that you're, um, you're a person in my life. You're cool or whatever it is. And so thinking about all of the different mothers out there is a nice thing to do on Mother's Day, because sometimes some people get left out, and that's not super cool, right? Nobody likes to be left out of a special day for them. And so see what your friends say. Go say, hey, it's great that you've been raising such a great kid, and I hope that they tell you Happy Mother's Day. However, a lot of what I've been talking about is assuming that you're in the same city or town as your mother. But if you're not and you live in a different country even or across the world, you should still make sure to reach out and say hi to your mom, right? I think a lot of people forget to talk to their parents in general when they're far away. I know that it's easy to do as somebody who doesn't live close to their parents anymore. But it's important. And one of the habits that I've gotten into is calling my parents more often. because when you think about it, if you don't live with them, you're not going to see them that many more times in your life, which is a little sad to think about, but it's also a good reminder that you should reach out and talk to your parents, talk to your mom and say, just randomly one day, call them and go, Hey, how are you? I want to chat with you for a little bit. Do you have some time? And so if you're listening to this episode on a day that isn't Mother's Day, so it's not the 13th of May, 2024, reach out to your mom and say hi on the phone, just call her on whatever video app you have and say, hey mom, how are you? Anyways, I'm gonna leave the Mother's Day episode there. I hope that you enjoyed this episode. And like I said, if you're a mother, happy Mother's Day. And I hope that you had a wonderful English lesson just now. And I'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.
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