An English professor once told me that many words in our language originated from the incoherent grunts and squeaks that expressed our feelings. That's why the word "Mother" was so interesting, he said: It had M, as in, "Mmmm, dinner smells good," but also -er, as in, "Rrrrrr! Stop pushing the want ads at me! Can't you see I'm drinking?!"

That's motherhood — Mmmm, Rrrr. And that's why Mother's Day has always bothered me: It tries to reduce the entire experience to just the Mmmm part. Can it be reduced? Once you were a part of her body. Years later, you pretend to forget her name in front of the guys at soccer practice. Parenthood altogether is a swamp.

For example, people are letting schools perform alcohol breath tests on their kids. It's not that mothers don't love their children. They just think their progeny might nail their classmates with a crossbow. At the same time, the state of Michigan has been checking parents of newborns for any history of abuse. Sure, Martha Washington stands for motherhood, but so does Ma Barker. And Norman Bates' Mom. And all those women I used to read about in the New York Post who locked their babies in a photo lab for eight months or sold them to some random guy in a 1972 Plymouth with out-of-state plates.

My own mother is closer to Martha Washington than Ma Barker, of course. So I'm giving her a special Mother's Day gift of not mentioning her for the rest of this column.

But one woman gives an unavoidably telling view of motherhood and Mother's Day, and that is the inventor of Mother's Day herself, Anna M. Jarvis, who died hating the holiday she founded.

Born May 1, 1864, Anna Jarvis was very close to her own mother Ann Marie Jarvis — they're buried next to each other just outside the Philadelphia city limits, in West Laurel Hill Cemetery, Bala Cynwyd, Pa. Ann Marie was active in promoting children's health, and once organized an ad hoc "Mothers Friendship Day." So after Ann died in 1905, Anna Jarvis poured her heart and money into promoting Mother's Day. President Woodrow Wilson finally proclaimed it an official holiday on May 10, 1908.

Fifteen years later, Anna Jarvis was suing to make it stop.

By then, Mother's Day had become the materialistic, commercialized pocket of evil with which we've all grown comfortable, and it wasn't what Anna Jarvis had in mind. She filed a lawsuit to impede the Mother's Day festival, and was arrested for disturbing the peace when she blew up at carnation dealers at a gathering of war-time mothers.

"A printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world," she wrote around this time. "And candy! You take a box to Mother — and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment."

She died broke on Nov. 24, 1948 — the day before Thanksgiving, another holiday that's gotten away from us. It turns out she never got married or had any children of her own. But she did have one offspring: Mother's Day itself. And fittingly, it grew up to be a great disappointment to her.

That's how it works. Kids break your heart, and parents tell you how to live even after you've left home. It's a baffling ordeal, and all parties involved can spend the rest of their lives trying to figure it out. When I call my mother on Mother's Day, never do I say merely "I just called to say I care." Her reaction would be, "It warms my heart that you're telling me this. BUT WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU LIVING NOW?!"

I move a lot.

And even as I prepare to turn 41, we're still talking things out — our past, ourselves, who we are, where we're going next, what went wrong, what went right.

But there. I said I wouldn't drag my mother into this column again, and I've done it anyway. Another promise I've broken. More guilt. I suppose I could rewrite this so it doesn't include that part. But knowing me and considering the spirit of the holiday, I'll probably just leave it the way it is, then feel bad about it for weeks. I'm lazy and ungrateful, and I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And that's what Mother's Day means to me.