Mom’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to you! For me, this day is still mostly about my own mother. She is pictured above at the tender age of twenty, holding her firstborn child…..me. The photo was taken in the hospital five days after the birth, back in the days when women were kept hospitalized for a week or more even after a normal delivery.

This afternoon I’ll spend some time with Mom; my stepdad has baked a cake and invited the family over for a surprise gathering. As if a mom can be surprised on Mother’s Day!

We’ll all chat and smile and laugh as if life has been smooth and seamless for everyone. Truth is, my mom exasperates the heck out of me, and perhaps I have a similar effect on her. I can be with her for awhile and then, enough is enough; through trial and much error over the years I have learned to make an exit before I've reached my limit.

To young mothers, I say: Love and accept your children just the way they are. Don’t ever compare them to someone else…..or at least don’t do so out loud. And, if you have trouble in your marriage or significant-other relationship, don’t let it boil over onto the young children in your household. My sister (in the middle in the next photo) would second that, I’m quite sure.

One more photo for good measure......here’s Mom at age 26, sitting with my sister and me on the rocky shore of Bear Lake in Colorado in the summer of 1964. Golly, I loved that trip and when we started for home I cried my eyes out---there in the back seat of our Oldsmobile---turned around on my knees, watching the mountains shrink and then disappear in the rear window. I didn’t particularly want to go back home.

Of course, I truly do love my mother…….let's face it, she did go to the trouble of giving birth to me.

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Surely there are many wrinkles in my own performance as a mother. I pray God will iron those out as much as possible as my four children live their lives.

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Over the years, I’ve received many sweet gifts from my kids on Mothers’ Day, often items earnestly constructed in art classes at school…..all very precious. I rarely receive flowers or a corsage and that doesn’t matter a bit to me. A few years ago, though, on the day before Mothers’ Day, I found a wayward helium balloon caught in the fence down the road from our farm. The large shiny balloon was printed with a bright bouquet of cheery flowers! How about that! I pretended it was a Mother’s Day gift from thoughtful friends in the Great Beyond.

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A blessed Mothers’ Day to you…..whether you’ve ever been a mother or not…….whether your mother is still living or not…..many blessings to you!

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