TAMPA BAY: Lots of cards; only one mom

But first there was another pressing decision to make. Rather than head to the grocery section, Tokarski, 30, first hit the aisle displaying hundreds of Mother's Day cards. Only a card that spoke eloquently to her unique relationship with her mother would do.

Tokarski searched for an hour, at least, before she found the perfect one. The card underscored Tokarski's bond with her mother, one framed by shared struggles.

"My mom and I are the best of friends, we're really close," said Tokarski, the mother of two sons, 12 and 2. "I don't just come in and grab a card."

Right now, a son is probably standing in an aisle somewhere looking for a card that will tell his mom what an idiot he was for not appreciating her when he was a boy. Someone else might be looking for a card to assure his mother, who lives in another state, that he loves her although they don't see each other that often. Or a daughter like Tokarski is taking the kind of time reading cards usually spent thumbing through a book at Barnes & Noble.

With Mother's Day two days away, men and women are flooding the card aisles, reading dozens of them, searching for words that perfectly sum up their feelings about, and relationships with, mom.

Mother's Day has the third-highest holiday card sales, behind Christmas and Valentine's Day, according to the Greeting Card Association.

But it might be the one fraught with the most introspection. Accurately selecting a Mother's Day card forces a son or daughter to relect on a childhood that may have been spent working mother's nerves or trying her patience, some Tampa Bay area residents explained this week.

"When you're a kid, you take advantage, go as far as you can go. I know I did," said Keith Tavares, 27, of Brandon. The Verizon customer service representative was at Beverly's Card & Gift Shop in downtown Tampa shopping for four cards: one each for his wife, grandmother and mother, who lives in Rhode Island; one from his two young children to their mother.

Tavares spent some 20 minutes perusing, most of that time devoted to finding a card for his mother. "Right off the bat it hit me," he said of the green and beige card that reads, in part: "Your love was a gift that I just took for granted . . . your patience, I figured, was meant to be tried."

Mother's Day is one of the few holidays for which men buy cards in larger numbers, said Kathy Krassner, editor-in-chief of Greetings etc., a trade publication for greeting card and stationery merchants.

Women purchased more than 80 percent of the $7-billion or $7.5-billion worth of greeting cards in the United States in 2002, Krassner said, citing Greeting Card Association figures.

As an example, she pointed to the Budweiser commercial in which a man and woman separately look for "I love you" cards. The woman, in a card shop, carefully studies the cards. The man, in a convenience store for beer, grabs a card from a thinly stocked rack without reading it.

"Men typically buy out of obligation," Krassner said. "Women and older people really enjoy the experience of purchasing cards, and spend a lot of time looking at cards. There's no doubt women keep the card industry in business. That's not to say men don't buy . . . they just do so less frequently . . . and with less enthusiasm."

There are Mother's Day cards for new moms. For stepmoms. For divorced moms. For pregnant women. Even for women who don't have and aren't expecting kids. Those cards are from cats and dogs.

William Price, 31, of Clearwater, was in the Pinellas Park Wal-Mart looking for a "catchy" card with enough room to write a personal message for his mother, who lives in New York. "I take a few minutes to read each card to find that extra certain meaning," Price said. "I try to take it an extra step."

Price's girlfriend, Cheley Howes, 38, also of Clearwater, said she looks for the card that says it all.

"It's got to be true to the relationship," said Howes. "You can just sign it."

Price and Howes found cards in about 20 minutes.

Tokarski, the other Wal-Mart customer, took significantly longer.

After 20 minutes of rejecting more than 100 cards - cards with glitter, cards with faux gems - Tokarski gave up, but only temporarily. She swung by the grocery aisles, tossing a turkey roast, apples, bananas and milk in her shopping basket.

Then she spotted more Mother's Day cards on a kiosk across from a bin of sausages and hot dogs. Among them was an iridescent pastel card with pink and mint green calla lilies. After reading the title, "The Special Love Between a Daughter and her Mother," Tokarski opened the card to see if it was good enough for her mother. The two grew closer, she said, because they were both abused by her father. Moreover, Tokarski always admired the relationship her mom had with her own mother.

Tokarski's mother keeps every card she gets. Tokarski, who got back every card she'd given her grandmother after she died, keeps every card her boys give her.

The card Tokarski was buying for Mother's Day this year had to speak about a mother who, rather than judge Tokarski when she got pregnant as a teenager, supported her.

"She stood by my side during the whole thing," said Tokarski, who works part-time as a child development specialist. "There were times I didn't feel like being a mom - I felt like being a teenager - and she pushed me in the right direction. It made me respect her more as a mom being that I was now a mom, too. I feel I'm a good mom because of that, because of her example."

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