I hope you had the chance to celebrate Mother’s Day this month. I, for one, have a great mother. She loves me unconditionally, encourages me without censure, gave me roots that made me feel secure and protected, and gave me wings that made me feel fearless and supported. She used to say if she did her job right, we would not need her. We would want her and love her, but would not need her. She was wrong. I need her every day. She still has to water my roots on a regular basis to keep me grounded and often has to clean and fluff my wings when I fly into trouble I did not expect. Her mother used to say children should be better than their mothers because they are standing on their mothers’ shoulders. Boy, did my Momma have to have some big strong shoulders! I hope I can live to be just partly the mother she has been.
Mothers are so important! Whether yours is living or not, she is the life force behind your being here. Some of us have mothers who labored to bring us into the world while others were chosen, adopted, married or appointed to mother us. Many were blessed to be loved and nurtured by caring moms who were there for us and some were confronted with the sad task of growing up motherless or under-mothered. No parent has a child and says ‘I intend to be the worst parent I can be…’. Most moms are excited to welcome that pure joy and incomparable love to their lives, but for some moms, life is what happens while you are busy doing something else. Maybe poverty or substance abuse, illness or death, personal choices or unwelcome blows completely beyond personal control were the ‘something else’ that interrupted mothering.
Maybe a ‘dad’ person was your mother. Maybe a grandmother, a foster, adopted or substitute was your mother. Find a moment to celebrate that someone and their contribution to your life. Perhaps their mistakes made you stronger? Maybe you learned what not to do from their failures? Or maybe they gave you safe, unconditional love and encouragement for whatever time they had with you. Whatever the story it is your story of your Mother. Embrace it!
Whether you had a proper Mum, a strict Mother, a hipster Mom, a gentle Mommy, a southern Momma, a country Ma or some other perfectly flawed person who cared about your stinky socks, be grateful. None of us hatched or were dropped off by the stork. Someone had that shining moment of wonder when we as babies took our first breath and with our first cry began our story in this unpredictably wonderful thing we call life. That person, and maybe several with, her deserve credit, kudos, gratitude and love for mothering.
It can be a thankless miraculously wonderful job to mother. And anyone who has tried to be one will tell you it teaches the one who mothers as much as they ever teach the one they seek to teach as they mother. Nothing changes you like loving someone else like a mother. Like the baby bird in the book Are You My Mother, all of us are beautiful treasures to someone… So, Happy Mother’s Day to all those out there who have mothered another.
