The Mother Experience
My Mother and me.
Today is Mother’s Day. To all of you deserving, loving, gracious, generous, patient, creative, talented, beautiful, caring etc. etc. etc. women who have ever mothered anyone in your life, I wish you gratitude and unconditional love every second of every minute of every hour of every day of your life. One day of recognition for the portion of your life that you have dedicated to any one of your children is but a drop of water in all the oceans on the planet.
Yesterday my son in law asked me if kids ever understand what sacrifices that parents make to be a parent? It was a moment of clairvoyance for him. He got that flash of awareness that only arrives when someone experiences a flashback to one of their own experiences as a teenager with their new perspective as a parent of a teenager. Every child puts their Mother through hell! Unknowingly for the most part, occasionally it is intentional.
The love that a mother bestows on every child is limitless. When your mother is demanding that you do your homework, it doesn’t feel like love, but it is. When your mother waits up for you to return from a night out with your friends, it feels like she is checking on you, but its love. When your mother makes you eat your peas, its love. When she brushes the tangles out of your hair and you are crying because it hurts, its love. When she gives you a time out, its love. When she yells or punishes you, its love. When she goes to PTA meetings, teacher conferences, bakes cookies for school events, or sits through recitals, its love. When she watches you graduate from kindergarten or elementary school, middle school, high school, college, or even graduate school, its love but its also relief that you have made it that far.
My Children and Grandchildren and Me
The thing is being a mother is not something you graduate from. Even though my daughters have become mother’s themselves, I am still their mother. The responsibility remains. The love continues. The torture persists. The joy is infinite.
I have been a mother for 43 years and a daughter for 68 years and a grandmother for 16 years. That is greater than a century of the mother experience. It is an inexplicable challenge greater than life itself. The mother experience cannot be described in mere words it must be lived. God bless every MOTHER and have a nice day too.