Mother’s Day is so … daunting, if you are a child.
Mother’s Day is so … stressful, if you are a husband of a mother (so my hubby says).
Mother’s Day is so … lonely, if you are a mom, whose child is not longer on this earth.
Mother’s Day is so … full of hurt, if motherhood has not happened for you.
Mother’s Day is so … beautiful, if you are blessed to be a mom (so, I say … no gifts required, but time together is always appreciated).
But for this blog, I write, not as a mom (as if that is possible), but as a daughter. And, this is a daunting thing to do.
When I think of my mom, I think of the words of a Jane Arden song, “Good Mother”:
“I’ve got money in my pocket,
I like the color of my hair 😉 ,
I’ve got a friend who loves me,
I’ve got a house, got a car,
I’ve got a good mother,
and her voice is what keeps me here”
But, what does ‘good mother’ mean to me, as I think about my mom?
She didn’t do it all right. She didn’t wear pearls, like June Cleaver. She didn’t have warm baked cookies for us when we came home from school. She didn’t read to us at bedtime every night. She didn’t keep her cool at all times. She didn’t drop what she was doing, every time I wanted her attention. She doesn’t always have wisdom to share (advice, though, … always). She didn’t work into the night sewing, and cleaning and whatever else that Proverbs 31 chick was supposed to do.
She is not perfect! Which is okay to me, because I am a mother, and I am so aware that ‘perfect’ and ‘mother’ do not go together (and surely, I was not perfect, as a daughter either).
But here is what she did right, in my mind:
She, despite being single and poor, chose to give birth to me.
She chose to marry, not just a man who would love her, but one who would be the best father to me, and to my brothers, that they would have in the years that followed.
She chose to do what she could, by caring for others children, to contribute financially to our family during the years when interest rates soared to near 20%.
She encouraged relationships with the parents of herself and our dad.
She celebrated … everything! If there was reason, there was cake!
She made birthdays special for my brothers and I.
She worked hard, with our dad, to maintain a marriage that has survived just over 40 years.
She loves us, all.
It would be so easy, too easy, to pick apart the problems, the mistakes, the weaknesses … the sins of our mother. But that does nothing to benefit anyone … that does nothing for her, that does nothing for us, for me.
She taught me to be honest, trustworthy, kind, sensitive and good to others, to be myself, and that it is a good thing to love God. I am, flaws and all, who I am because of my upbringing, because of my good mother. I believe my own children will only love me, in proportion to how I have modeled my love for my own mother. The jury is still out on how that is going to go.
But I know that I love her. I know that I respect her. I know that I could never know what it was to walk in her shoes, because I have been blessed to have grown up in a different time, with different parents, and different circumstances.
I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she did the best she could, with the resources that were available to her. And I know that, one thing is for sure, she has loved me from my earliest beginnings and will until we part on this earth.
“I’ve got a good mother, and her voice is what keeps me here,
Feet on ground, heart in hand, facing forward,
Be yourself”
* this is a re-post from four years ago … but still so true.
itsawonderfilledlife 