Happy Mother’s Day!  Did everyone have their mimosas served in bed by their little darlings and or husbands?  Did you also have the day to yourself with every desire met before you even requested it?  Me either.  If you believe life begins at conception, I have been a mother for 33 years.  If you believe it begins at birth, I have been a mother for 32.  Either way, it has been a while.  I have received a lot of mother’s day gifts.  At first the gifts were usually purchased by someone else with the kids names attached to them.  Once they were old enough to do craft projects I usually received something the kiddos had made themselves.  Now that they are adults there is a lot of variety in the mother’s day gifts.  I have received homemade, handmade, store bought, sincere, funny, and so sweet they will make you cry gifts.  This blog is dedicated to mothers every where in every phase of the journey.

When I was a young mom (very young) I really needed to have an instruction manual.  The only thing I knew about motherhood was that I loved the precious little boy I had been given.  We grew up together, since I was only 17 when he was born, and I made a lot of mistakes.  He has forgiven me for most of them.  He has a son of his own now and he understands how easy it is to make those mistakes.  The biggest difference is that he was thirty when he had his son.  I like to think he was more mature.  At the very least he was prepared.  He and his wife are preparing for potty training.  I remember when I potty trained him.  He turned two.  I bought him some underwear.  I put it on him.  I said “you are two.  That is big enough to go in the potty.  If you have an accident in your underwear I am going to spank you.”  A week and several spankings later he was potty trained.  Yes, I feel awful.  Remember, I was young and stupid.  I wish I could go back and do it right. Thankfully, he was only minimally scarred. 

By the time I was twenty, I was the mother of two boys, whom I called Cain and Abel.  I wasn’t sure who was Cain because I really didn’t know who would survive.  They fought 24/7.  They fought over everything.   They woke up fighting about who got up first and went to bed fighting about whose turn it was to turn out the light.  They needed a line down the back seat of the car and God help anyone who crossed that particular Mason Dixon line.  I went to bed many nights and cried myself to sleep.  Not because I regretted having such horrible children, but because I knew that I had to wake up and referee again the next morning.  There were days I felt like dressing in black and white and donning a whistle.  One day I had reached my limit.  I went outside and drew a circle in the yard with a stick.  I placed both boys in it and told them to duke it out.  Two little faces looked up at me with total confusion in their eyes.  “Go ahead.  Kill one another.”  Still nothing.  “I’m serious.  This is what you are living for isn’t it?  Each of you wants to kill his brother.  Go ahead!  Who ever wins will go to jail and neither one of you will be in this house with me anymore.  I win.  So let’s get started.  Who’s going to throw the first punch?”  Of course there wasn’t a fight.  They were pretty sure I had lost my mind.  The rest of that day went pretty well, unfortunately it didn’t last. 

At twenty-five my brood was complete.  I thought I was through after the two boys.  My God, who wouldn’t.  However, God has a sense of humor and I have proof.  You see, I always wanted a daughter…so God gave me one…just like me.  Here’s the problem.  I am not sure there is room in the world for two mes.  When my daughter was born.  She was not a happy baby.  I thought she hated me.  I felt like she knew that I was less than ecstatic about being pregnant a third time and she had decided that she would take it out on me by leaving me sleep deprived.  The only way she would sleep was on my chest, and I had to be sitting up.  I managed for about ten days.  Around that time I threw in the towel and called my sister and blubbered to her that I just needed a few hours sleep, would she please come and get the baby.  I hadn’t had a shower in days, and I couldn’t remember the last time I slept for more that just a few minutes because I couldn’t lie down and would she please, please, help me out.  She was there in about 15 minutes.  Two days later when I took my new daughter to the doctor for her two week check up I found out that she had a staph infection in her breasts that caused her great pain when I laid her down in her bed.  The only way she could get comfy was on my chest with the heat of my body against her.  Once the doctor put her on antibiotics she was like a new kid.  I finely regained what little sanity I had left.  Now I was a 25 year old mom with a new born, a six year old and an eight year old.  I didn’t have a lot of sanity.  I caught myself saying things like, “no one is to ever touch any one ever again!”  I used creative parenting at every opportunity.  I remember traveling to Little Rock to the Children’s Hospital and stopping at a roadside park and making the children run around the picnic tables to  use up some of their excess energy.  I have had deep voiced friends call and pretend to be Santa Claus and admonish them for their behavior. Every where we traveled we had a switch on the dash of the car.  I have followed them two cars back on dates.  I have done everything I ever threatened to do if they misbehaved. 

At the age of 30 I was a single mom, although most of my married life I was a single mom, and I learned that most of the tension in our home wasn’t from these three rambunctious children.  It was from one controlling man.  I quickly became a better parent.  I relaxed.  I still didn’t threaten anything I wasn’t prepared to follow through on.  I spent a lot of time at school plays, choir concerts, basketball games, baseball games, softball games, volleyball games, and football games.  I have applauded louder than anyone as my youngest son took his bows on stage. I have spent many Saturdays without make-up watching my daughter get hers done professionally for prom, or homecoming.  I have taken her to dress fittings, nail appointments, hair appointments, and been awed by how beautiful she was as she walked out the door.  I have picked up her dates flowers and lent her my jewelry.  I have collapsed after she was gone, and high tailed it to dinner just to have a margarita.  I have stayed up to hear every detail when all I really wanted was to go to sleep.  I watched my son fall in love with the girl I now consider my daughter.  I saw the birth of my grandson.  I am currently watching my youngest son realize that he is in love and that it is greater than he is.  My daughter is just learning who she is.  The chrysalis is opening and I can’t wait to see the butterfly emerge.  She’s not there yet.  She thinks she is, but a mother knows.  She has one wet wing out and flapping, but it’s a start.

My kids ask me what do I want for mother’s day.  I already have it.  I have three adult offspring who are about as well adjusted as the world lets anyone get these days.  One has given me a second daughter and a grandson.  One is in the process of reaching his personal goals.  The final one is finding herself in her own way.  Isn’t that all we want for our children? To be as happy as possible and reasonably adjusted?   I have always said that I didn’t care if they were ditch diggers if they were happy ditch diggers.  I think that my kids are happy most days, and I think the odds are good that they are getting happier.  They are finding what it takes to make them happy and they are working on it.  Life isn’t something you ever complete.  It is always a work in progress.  If you ever think you are through, you are dead.  I have always wanted my children to be smarter than I was at their age, and they are.  Thanks guys for the wonderful gift!

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