TO OUR MOTHERS
Last week was Mother’s Day, that special Sunday when mom lies in bed, listening to the sound of havoc being created in her kitchen and wishing she could get up and prevent the inevitable chaos that would be left in the wake of young children getting a special breakfast made for her.
The look of pride that is on the faces of the kids peering through the bedroom door, is priceless, and the good mom will look surprised and delighted at the sticky mess that is presented to her. She will assume a look of pure rapture as she cuts into the French toast oozing with syrup and lovingly admires the wilted flower that is hanging over the rim of a water glass. She will drink the weak, milky tea or coffee and make the appropriate appreciative noises.
As the kids all pile on the bed and share in the feast she will try not to think of the sticky mess that is being smeared on the sheets. She knows that her “special” day of rest is going to be a day of laundry and kitchen clean-up. However, these are the things to remember when you are older and your children are living elsewhere, having their children make breakfast for them.
Young, over-worked mums often feel like a walking nursery, they have huge bags that have room for toys, graham crackers, sippy cups, diapers, a clean tee shirt and all the other one hundred and one things that your child may need when leaving the house, the thought of ever going out carrying a small purse, seems like a dream.
A mom isn’t a person in her own right, but a child’s mother and that seems to be her only claim to identity.
However, it does all come to an end and what do we do? We spend a couple of years being our own person then we start hankering for grandchildren. In your mid forties, when you are finally enjoying a neat, fingerprint free home and having the luxury of going out with your friends, for a leisurely lunch, you acquire a high chair and a folding crib “because the baby is coming to visit”. The woman, who couldn’t wait to get rid of the last diaper just a few years ago, is now spending hours in the infant department, oohing and aahing over tiny garments.
How many of us still hang on to the little art projects that our children made all those years ago and presented to us on birthdays or Mother’s Day. I still come across little things tucked in drawers that take me back over forty years. The half walnut shell with a whole peanut, eyes drawn in black crayon, tucked under a cotton ball coverlet. A cotton hanging thread is attached and it used to hang on my Christmas tree every year, along with the clothes pin reindeer and the paper snowflakes. These were viewed in horror by my sophisticated fifteen year old, when placed on the tree. However I didn’t mention it, years later, when similar things hung on her tree, by her delighted little ones.
A vase, lovingly painted by my 8th grader, leaks and can’t be used for flowers, but makes a wonderful container for utensils. A breadboard, made in high school, of various woods and lovingly smoothed and varnished, used every single day.
How about the very dog-eared copy of I’ll love you Forever, or Goodnight Moon, that I still can shed a tear over before placing back in the bottom drawer of my chest.
Mother’s Day is every day. Mothers should be much appreciated, they raise the next generation and surely, that is a tremendously important job. I remember so well when I had four preschoolers and had an abscessed tooth. I begged Dave to take the day off work so I could stay in bed for the morning. His reply, as he walked out of the door was, “just don’t do anything.” No, I didn’t kill him on the spot, I survived the day and many others in our fifty three year marriage, but never will I look in disgust at a mom with a child having a tantrum in a store.
Being a mom is probably the hardest job in the world, in the end it is the most rewarding, but for those early years and right through the teenage angst, every mom deserves our respect. Let’s give her our support.
Publisher: Hear Hear !!