What She Did

When you are a child you have great plans on how to be a good mother. They are of course differ then how your mother is currently raising you. Sugar coated frosted flakes will be served for breakfast every single morning. Ice cream will accompany the end of each meal and veggies will be for the dog. School will be optional as well as work of course and play time will be utilized all day long.

When you get to be a teenager you feel that you are learning a lot on how to be a good mother. For in unlike your own mother who has perpetually been adult all of her life you will understand the trials of teenage doldrums. When you are mother you will always behave perfectly when your teenage daughter is changing personality 9 times a day and ignores any words of wisdom completely. Ahem.

One day you grow up and are an adult and you look in the mirror and realize something. You are your mother's daughter. Speech, actions, emotions, looks all portray the underlining evidence you came from the womb of your mother. Suddenly as you try very violently and unsuccessfully to deal with yourself and your never ending problems you realize just how full your mother's hands were and still are.

And you understand just how hard being a mother must be.

My mother laid in bed for long weeks so I could be laid in the cradle and not the coffin. Mother the woman who is the champion of being a grandmother and mother all at once. Mom the one who listens to me for hours on end. Mom who senses the despair within in me and wants desperately for it to go away.

Mention the word mom and it can bring so many mixed emotions. Some where deep inside there is maybe a resolve to do things a tad bit differently with your own children. Just as your own mother probably also vowed to do with you.

Nobody has had a perfect childhood, because all of us came from sinners. Stop though and think. There is probably a lot of things your mother did right.

Strawberry short cake for supper and ice cream after Lima bean soup. Long walks on the road and reading out loud chapters and chapters of books. Listening and listening and just more listening. I think my mom tries to do more listening then talking and its wonderful.

Remember all the things your mother did right, there probably is quite a few.

And Happy Birthday to the woman who has done a lot of things right. She is a pretty swell mum I must say and I'm a very blessed girl