MOTHER OF INVENTION
Mother’s Day brunch is off the table this year. So here are nine (mostly online) ways to celebrate with Mom, even if families aren’t under the same roof
LOCKDOWN life is big on homestyle comforts and low on exciting excursions.
Before the coronavirus kept most of the country housebound, we used to celebrate Mother’s Day with quality family get-togethers and some kind of special treat for the guest of honor.
A tasty meal out on the town? An enlightening trip to a museum? An entertaining jaunt to the theater? They were great — but they’re no longer options.
But with a little imagination, there are ways to approximate many celebratory activities using online resources this upcoming Mother’s Day, on May 10.
Here are a variety of things to do for Mother’s Day 2020 that’ll almost make you forget you can’t leave the apartment.
FOR THE MOM WHO ENJOYS A GLASS OF RED WITH DINNER A virtual wine tasting
One upside to wine tastings conducted over the Internet is that your teacher — and your tipple — can come from anywhere. Oregon winery Et Fille, located in the state’s lush Willamette Valley, was founded by father and daughter duo Howard and Jessica Mozeico. (The name of the winery, translated from French, means “and daughter.”) Jessica — who now has a daughter herself, 4-year-old Gabriella — is hosting two Mother’s Day Mom & Daughter Tastings on Saturday, May 9, over Zoom.
$125, including shipping. To register and receive instructions for ordering the two bottles on the tasting menu, e-mail kyle@EtFilleWines.com by Sunday.
FOR THE MOM WHO’S READY TO EMBRACE SPRING A flower-arranging class on Zoom
FlowerSchool New York holds Open Studio Box classes in flower arranging every Friday. Sign up by 8 p.m. the Monday before the class to get the week’s blooms delivered in time for the three Friday sessions, which take place all in a row. Expect peonies, hydrangeas, tulips, daffodils and more, straight from Holland. Master florist Calvert Crary will explain and demonstrate two design styles per session; you’ll end up with six different arrangements.
The price is $340, including shipping of flowers, or there’s a Zoom-only option for
$100 if you BYOF (bring your own flowers). Sign up at FlowerSchoolNY.com. Students will need about six vases (or other containers that hold flowers), two buckets and clippers.
FOR THE MOM WHO GEEKS OUT ON HISTORY A jaunt through New York — without ever leaving your couch
Known for uncovering the city’s quirky history via prose and photography, Untapped New York has expanded into tours — now virtual tours for members. Tours scheduled around Mother’s Day take celebrants to the Queens County Farm Museum, New York City’s oldest working historical farm, and to Inwood’s Dyckman Farmhouse Museum, Manhattan’s last remaining farmhouse.
Membership starts at $10 a month. Get two months free with the code STAYATHOME. It’s all at UntappedCities.com.
Meanwhile, the New York Adventure Club has lively virtual events for New Yorkers — or those who love the city and its cultural offerings — from a seltzer webinar with a live egg cream demonstration to an online tour of City College, dubbed Manhattan’s Hogwarts. On Wednesday, May 13, from 5:30 to 7 p.m., join staff members for a virtual tour of the New York Society Library, which, dating back to 1754, is the oldest library in the city. (George Washington forgot to return two books there!)
Sign up for a $10 class with Mom at NYAdventureClub.com — or buy her a gift card to redeem whenever quarantine boredom strikes.
FOR THE ARTISTIC MOM A virtual painting class
San Francisco-based Glow Events specializes in small-group activities that can be done remotely. Its slate of offerings includes a painting class, which would be ideal for a big family spread across the country that wants to spend the day together. For a minimum of eight people, a teacher will ship out all supplies (canvas, paints and brushes) to any address and instruct live via videoconference to create the artwork of your choice.
Pricing per person starts at $130. Sign up at GlowEvents.com. One week’s notice is needed to ship materials.
FOR THE ANIMALLOVING MOM A ‘home safari’ to famous mother-anddaughter hippos at the Cincinnati Zoo
The Cincinnati Zoo’s Hippo Cove attracted a national audience in January 2017 when a baby was born six weeks premature. Weighing in at 29 pounds, Fiona is the smallest hippo to ever survive. Now 3 years old and about 1,300 pounds, she is one of the stars of the zoo’s popular Instagram feed, along with her 3,000-pound mom, Bibi.
The mother-daughter duo features in the first installment of Cincinnati Zoo’s “home safari” series on YouTube and Facebook. Each weekday at 3 p.m., caretakers explain facts about their animal charges and take questions from viewers in clips that last about 15 minutes. Safaris from past days are available to watch too, which could mean hours of oohing and aahing over cheetahs, porcupines, ocelots, sloths, lions, penguins and more.
Viewing the home safaris is free, but a donation to the zoo’s emergency fund is encouraged. Find more information at CincinnatiZoo.org.
FOR THE MOM WHO DOESN’T MISS A ‘JEOPARDY!’ EPISODE A live trivia game online
A San Diego-based engineer hosts an online trivia game each Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern — perfect for the family that delights in pub quizzes and brain-teasers. When Graig Zethner, a Long Island native who now works at Qualcomm, couldn’t attend trivia nights in person due to the coronavirus, he started hosting his own weekly game on Facebook Live that is open to all players.
“I’ve been into trivia as far back as I can remember,” Zethner tells The Post. “I used to watch ‘Jeopardy!’ as a kid on a small black-and-white TV, and appeared on the show in 2011. (I didn’t do too well — stage fright.)”
It’s free to play, but Zethner appreciates donations to Feeding America from those who enjoy the game.
Interested? First, join his Facebook group, TrivialStudies.com Live “Pub” Trivia. Then head over to his Web site, TrivialStudies.com/Live, just before the game starts to create your team name and load up the page to input answers. Then click back to the Facebook page and wait for Round 1 to begin in the livestream.
FOR THE MOM WITH A SWEET TOOTH A virtual chocolate tasting
Give Ma a box of chocolates — plus a tutorial to help her learn about where they came from and how they’re made. On Mother’s Day, Chantilly, Va.-based River-Sea Chocolates is offering an hourlong class, which comes with a tasting kit of goodies that can be mailed to any home address in the US.
Helmed by the husbandand-wife team of Mariano and Krissee D’Aguiar, River-Sea sources its cacao beans from Brazil, Peru, Tanzania, Grenada and Vietnam. Mariano will lead the virtual Mother’s Day classes with a story behind each piece and why it tastes the way it does.
Available for $25.99, there are three separate Zoom sessions on May 10. Sign up by Sunday, May 3, via Eventbrite or RiverSeaCh
ocolates.com to ensure that the tasting kit — of six minibars in different flavors, palate-cleansing crackers and a bag of butterscotch chocolate black tea — arrives in time for the class. If you register on Eventbrite, e-mail Taste@RiverSeaChocolates.com the address to mail the kit. The Zoom code will be provided in the tasting kit.
FOR THE MOM WHO WOULD ORDINARILY SEE A BROADWAY SHOW A musical or a play, streamed
Have tickets to “West Side Story” or “Company” that are yellowing while stuck to the fridge? Stages aren’t dark on BroadwayHD, a subscription streaming service for aficionados of the Great White Way. My own mother is excited to tune in to “Gypsy” with Bette Midler, but there are a range of Shakespeare options, too, for the dramatists out there, including Patrick Stewart’s 2010 turn in “Macbeth.”
On the site’s homepage, BroadwayHD.com, click Give a Gift to purchase a subscription ($8.99 per month or $99.99 per year). Then pick a performance out of the more than 300 on offer to stream.
FOR THE FEMINIST MOM Avisittothe National Women’s History Museum
In-person museum jaunts are out of the question this Mother’s Day. But on the plus side, there are ample chances to visit a cultural institution hundreds of miles from home that might not have even been a blip on your radar before. Celebrate America’s women with the National Women’s History Museum in Alexandria, Va., which has 29 online exhibits on topics ranging from the women of NASA and a history of home sewing to Harriet Tubman and female athletes. An online series called “Cooking With the First Ladies,” in which museum staffers make recipes from a cookbook of favorite dishes of all the presidents’ wives, will kick off on May 8.
Visit the museum at WomensHistory.org for its online exhibits and programs.