Mother's Day

Mother’s Day. A day dedicated to the celebration of mother’s. My father always used to tell me this corny saying “Did you know that if your mother never had children, chances are, you wouldn’t either?” It would take me a few seconds to realize “Duh.” My dad. Always a comedian.

Mother’s Day. A salute to all the mom’s out there. Living or deceased. The changes our bodies go through to bring our children here are astounding. The mood changes, the skin changes, the body image changes. The pant and bra size changes. (This is most often a permanent change.) When it was all done with, it often didn’t matter. You and your partner created a living, breathing, squirming (and sometimes squalling) little human. You didn’t need to pass a test. You didn’t need to graduate from a class. You didn’t have to get a license.

After my first child was born and the doctor and nurses had left the room, I looked at my husband and he looked at me and we looked at our daughter. Now what? What do we do now? Did anyone else have this feeling?

I sometimes get this feeling again. Only, it’s after one of the kids do something REALLY drastic. Like today. John took Joel to his bedroom to change his dirty pants. But John did not know that Joel was dirty half way up the back. Leave it to Dad to not take special care to not get poop everywhere. Leave it to Mom to come in and save the day. Honestly—how does one person with the aid of an 8 month old, smear so much poop around in 30 seconds? And I don’t think that it even took that long. I was in the kitchen, heard the gross and disgusted comments from my husband and the “Ah, gross” exclamation from my son and stopped cleaning up from supper to walk to the rear part of the house. Maybe thirteen seconds.

Poop in the hair. Poop all over John’s hands. Poop all over the changing table pad. What the . . . .? Okay, I have another question. Have any of you mother’s out there thought the question “Does my husband screw this up so bad so he doesn’t have to do this? Or is he really that inept?” Just checking.

Then, after everyone is tucked in for the seventeenth time, I saunter back to Jack’s and Josef’s room to check on them (this is a wise decision). Turns out, Josef snuck into the kitchen, grabbed the Tupperware container of Cheerios and dumped what seemed like a million of the little O’s all over his bed sheets. I turned the corner in time to see him stuff a handful of the little cholesterol fighting fiber catchers into his mouth. Then Josef attempted to say “Mwamah. I hun-mphjph” Translation “Mama, I hungry.” Oh man.

Now, after the day is done, I have decided once again that the stretch marks, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide moments were worth having my kids. There is always some type of drama in our house at any given moment (except when they are all asleep). The little scenes in your life matter the most. I loved it today when they come into my room and peered over my mattress to see if I was really asleep. Then they gave me all the treasures they labored so hard on during the school hours. (God bless those teachers, stoking our children’s inner artist). Some of the art pieces are repeats, but they are all so special in everyway. I cannot wait to get more.

Mother’s Day was a great one today.

P.S. Mother’s Day was first founded by Julia Ward Howe. She made a proclamation was a peaceful reaction to the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. Later President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law making the second Sunday of May the official Mother’s Day holiday.