Mother’s Day this Sunday will be extra special for families spanning the U.S.-Mexico border. This year, Mexico’s Mother’s Day, which is always celebrated on May 10, falls on the same day as the American holiday.
But also this year, coronavirus is significantly complicating celebrations, for everyone from families trying to honor their moms from a distance to businesses that usually get a big Mother’s Day bump.
That includes mariachi bands. Mother’s Day is huge for them.
“We call it the big money weekend,” said Lilly Sanchez, director and owner of Mariachi Femenil Flores Mexicanas, an all-female group in El Paso.
They usually have non-stop gigs lined up, surprising mothers and grandmothers with hour-long serenades.
“We do all the Mother’s Day songs, sprinkled with a bunch of really fun stuff because of course all the Mother’s Day songs — I don’t know why — but all of them are slow and sad and we don’t want them to be crying the entire hour,” Sanchez said. “So we’ll play a slow song and then hype them up with a cumbia or a ranchera or a polka and then we do another sad song. We try to keep the crowd really entertained.”
Sanchez said some years they can work up to 27 hours straight and make around $1,200 each. In El Paso, she said, that’s someone’s mortgage. Students in the band often put that money toward phone bills, classes or textbooks.
But this year, all their gigs have been canceled. They considered doing backyard performances but ultimately decided against it.
“The [COVID-19] cases here in El Paso just keep going up so we don’t want to risk our health and we certainly do not want to risk any other peoples’ health, especially knowing that these gigs are mainly for the elderly, for grandmas and older mothers,” Sanchez said.
Plus, it’s not like you can play the trumpet through a mask.
As for serenades over Zoom, “unless we’re all in the same room it doesn’t work,” Sanchez said. “If we all log in from our computers, it’s not a combined sound. It’s delayed or if the trumpets play the entire sound goes out. With trumpets and voices and really loud guitarists, it would just be a mess.”
So this Sunday, instead of dusting her eyelids with glitter and dressing up in her three-piece turquoise suit, Sanchez plans to lounge around in sweatpants and spend Mother’s Day with her own children, for the very first time.
On the Eastside of El Paso, Azereth Mendoza will spend the day with her mom, setting up extravagant balloon displays.
“I asked her ‘hey, what do you want to do for Mother’s Day?’” Mendoza said. “‘Do you want us to bake you a cake?’ And she’s like, ‘I have an idea, how ‘bout help me with the business?’”
The family party business, Moments By A. Me., is hurting from the coronavirus.
“They can’t have parties so we can’t decorate parties and that’s the basis of our entire business,” Mendoza said. “So we have to, you know, adapt.”
They’ve adapted by bringing the party to people’s front doors, using balloons to jazz up the drive-by birthdays and graduations that have become so popular during the pandemic.
On Mother’s Day, they’ll set up elaborate arches or ropes of braided balloons that cascade from the roof to the doorstep.
At their storage space, Mendoza and her mother Alma sift through clear plastic bins filled with balloons in every imaginable size and color — including the vibrant pinks and metallic golds they’ll use to surprise their clients’ moms with pop-up front yard displays.
“So when they come out of their houses they see this beautiful arrangement, but it’s also keeping it safe so we can celebrate, be there for them, let them know they’re special.”
The Mendozas safeguard everyone’s health by ensuring they don’t come into contact with clients. They set up the balloon arrangements outside, then send a text when everything’s ready.
“We go and decorate without any physical contact,” Alma Mendoza said in Spanish. “It’s something beautiful that allows us to work in some way.”
When asked how it feels to bring people joy during such a challenging time, she was insistent: “I don’t think we’re helping them,” she said. “I think they’re helping small businesses that were halted.”
Azereth Mendoza said the business is booked up for Mother’s Day, with appointments starting at four in the morning. That money will help keep them afloat.
“Everything we earn is going straight to the rent,” she said — on their brand new party hall. Late last year, they took a leap and expanded the family business.
“It’s always been in the back of the mind for my parents to open their own party hall,” Mendoza said. “So we took on the risk in November,” converting a former gym into a vibrant space for wedding receptions, baby showers and graduation parties.
“And then this hit us out of nowhere,” she said.
Of course, it’s not just businesses feeling the impact of COVID-19. Families are also preparing for a different type of Mother’s Day.
For El Pasoan Clara Carlos, the day always meant a cookout at her grandmother’s house. That’s how it’s done in El Paso, she said — a big family gathering in the backyard.
“You have to have the meat,” Carlos said. “You have to have some cebollitas.”
She would bring the queso. Her tía and cousins showed up with a homemade cake or pie.
This year, she’s staying home. But she’ll drop some gifts on her grandma’s doorstep: flowers, her favorite perfume, maybe some nice lotion. Her grandma has glaucoma and can’t see very well, so she likes to bring scented gifts.
“That way she can smell it and think, ‘this is the one that Clarita got me,’” Carlos said.
She hopes to make the day special from afar.
“I really just don’t want for my grandma to feel like we don’t care,” she said. “So I’m really hoping that all of us, we just take the time to talk to her for a little bit. Call her and make sure she knows that we are here even though we can’t physically be there with her.”
Carlos was already bracing herself for a difficult Mother’s Day. It’s the first one since she lost her own mom, Rosalina, last year.
“Not being able to go and hang out with my dad or anything, or even get together with my brother, it’s gonna be really tough,” she said. “It’s hard that we can’t get together and celebrate her and do all the stuff she loved to do with us.”
Carlos will try to honor Rosalina virtually. She said her mom always insisted on cooking — even on Mother’s Day.
“One time she let me make her mole,” Carlos laughed.
Rosalina would put on music — usually Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” on loop — and hold a dance party in the kitchen. So this year, Carlos plans to Facetime her brother while they both cook one of their mom’s signature dishes: entomatadas.
The dish reminds her of a childhood summer vacation, when she and her brother ate nothing but their mom’s entomatadas for a week straight. It was their favorite food and the only thing they requested.
“That’ll be a good [dish] to make because we both know how to make it,” Carlos said. “We’ll do that. We’ll listen to Adele. Ah, it’s gonna be great.”
