As the sunny month of May rolls around, so do the greeting cards and Reach notifications. With the sun and excitement for the end of the school year, comes Mother’s Day. The holiday is a special opportunity to celebrate a mother, grandmother, aunt, or any other special woman in your life, and Webbies do not take it for granted.
The Webb community is a mix of local day students and boarding students from around the world, meaning that the majority of boarding students are not able to spend Mother’s Day with their families. This creates a difference in the way day students and boarding students are able to celebrate their mothers on Mother’s Day. So how do Webbies celebrate?
Jayden Aleman (‘26)
For local boarder Jayden Aleman (‘26), Mother’s Day is all about family. Her family’s Mother’s Day begins with her family attending a service at their local church. After church, they will go to the house of one of Jayden’s aunts and enjoy a big meal, prepared with love, as a family. For the Aleman family, food is a way of bringing the family together to celebrate.
“I feel like a form of celebration in my family is food, using it to celebrate one another and to just really engage with each other,” Jayden said.
Since coming to Webb her sophomore year, Jayden’s Mother’s Day experiences have shifted. As a boarding student, she is not logistically able to be with a big group of her family to celebrate. But this has not stopped Jayden’s willingness and ability to celebrate her mother, grandmother, and other influential women in her life. The scale of her celebrations has had to decrease, so now, it is more about finding the little things that make her mom happy.
“Being at Webb, I think focusing on the little things, and just doing the things that make my mom smile and really just light up her day,” Jayden said, “This year, I bought my mom some shoes for Mother’s Day, and it was a very small gesture, but my mom does a lot for me. I thought it was the least that I could do to put a smile on her face and make her day better.”
Natália Mosaquites (‘26)
Day student Natália Mosaquites (‘26) shares that her family’s Mother’s Day celebrations include time with family and lots of soccer!
“We would normally go to the country club that my uncle belongs to,” Natália said, “We’d have brunch together, celebrate. Then we’d come back to my grandparents’ house, and we just do some more celebrating.”
Aside from a whole family celebration, Natália and her two younger siblings would spend the day before Mother’s Day honoring and pampering their mom. They bring her flowers and plan fun outings, like seeing movies, going to the park, or even making the drive to LA to support LA’s National Women’s Soccer League team: Angel City FC.
The Mosaquites family’s celebrations usually include a ton of soccer, with one or more club soccer tournaments happening on the day. Additionally, tech rehearsals for the Spring Musical, which Natália has been a proud part of for her entire Webb career, tend to fall on Mother’s Day. In that case, Natália’s mom has been known to bring treats for the cast, especially for the boarding students who cannot be with their mothers.
“As a young woman, it’s not just about celebrating my mom and everything that she’s given me on and how she’s nurtured me in my life but also thinking about the fact that it’s so beautiful to be a mom and so special,” Natália said. “I hope to be a mom just like mine.”
Kenny Clay (‘25)
As a boarding student from Atlanta, Georgia, Kenny Clay (‘25) is unable to be with his mom in-person on Mother’s Day. However he still finds ways to celebrate her.
“We’ll have a family FaceTime, or I send her some flowers.” Kenny said. “But you got to work with the geographical constraints.”
Even though Kenny is over two thousand miles away from his hometown and family, he still finds a way to honor his mom on her special day.
Before coming to Webb, however, the Clay family Mother’s Day celebrations were a lot more understated.
“Me and my brother would always go out and spend the day with my mom,” Kenny said. “We would have lunch or brunch, but eventually we just started hanging out at home and cooking a little bit.”
Due to the distance, Kenny has had to shift his Mother’s Day plans to rely on the internet and post office, but he still finds a way to honor his mom, even from two thousand miles away.
Webbies are in a unique position when it comes to holidays like Mother’s Day, as a good number of Webb’s student population is not able to be with their moms to celebrate them on Mother’s Day. Despite this, boarding students like Kenny find ways to celebrate their moms from afar, while day students like Natália celebrate their moms with special family traditions and help bring a little Mother’s Day cheer to the Webb community.
