For me, motherhood was definitely a learn-by-doing process I sometimes got right or simply cried through. Children don’t come with a user manual, unlike my refrigerator, dishwasher, and vehicles.
I’ve learned the inside of hospitals, urgent care facilities and can find a 24-hour pharmacy wherever we travel. The world hasn’t always been just, nor classmates always kind, but so many wonderful, and truly funny things happened along the way. Somehow it is the mom-fails and child mischief that make the most memorable stories, as sleep deprivation, long days, and frustrations fade with time.
One day a total stranger tapped my shoulder in the grocery store with that look. I turned to see what she pointed at.
“Are those YOUR children?” as my twin two-year-olds in the shopping cart laughed as they dropped every egg in the carton on the floor while I turned my back to pick tomatoes in the produce aisle.
Then there was the day I went shopping with my eleven-year-old daughter. She paused, then looked up at me and said “Mom, I don’t think that beauty trick worked.”
I raised my children before smart phones, social media, digital photos, and job-protected family leave from work. Today, Instagram, Facebook, and Zoom connect moms with fellow moms and family in ways I could not have imagined. I muse about going back in time with the wisdom and self-assurance that comes with decades of living. I would have stressed far less and laughed more. Eventually, my definition of a good day became when your child isn’t in the hospital. Everything else is just a speed bump. My middle-school son summed it up one day.
“Mom – why is it that adults always think of everything that can go wrong,
instead of looking forward to everything that goes right?”
Motherhood is a sisterhood where God chooses the members. It comes from the heart, with the guarantee of mistakes, regrets, lessons, and a joy that comes from deep within. I can’t imagine my life without children, and it is by far the most important, and hardest job I have ever taken on. There’s a reason why the other holiday named for mothers is Labor Day. (:-)
This post is dedicated to fellow moms, and the mom-people in our lives. I also want to honor moms who have lost a child, for whom Mother’s Day will always be a painful day to get through. You don’t have to be a birth mother to be a mother to others. A post I wrote in 2017 is dedicated to these other mothers in our lives. Click here.
“I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
As long as I’m living,
My baby you’ll be.
From Love You Forever by Robert Munsch
#mothersday #happymothersday #love #mom #family #motherhood #motherhoodjourney
