HEY, YOU… MOM!
Yes, you… the one they call MOM: with the five bags slung over your shoulders, balancing your coffee (aka life elixir) travel mug in one pinkie and your car keys in the other, while herding the toddler and carrying the baby seat to the car. You, with the unkempt hair, and growing toenails and chipped paint (because TIME). You, balancing twenty different tasks, constantly ticking off little to-do lists and mentally high-fiving yourself for remembering ANYTHING with the little sleep you had. You, who can’t remember the last time you actually FINISHED a conversation with another adult without being interrupted to pick up a toy; pass a sippy cup; look at a little person’s latest find, or saving a sock from the dog.
You, who longingly look at that the novel on your bedside table, knowing for a full fact that the days of reading through a book in one evening, curled up in bed with HOT chocolate and a warm water bottle, are long gone (at least for now). You, who think about how it used to take you two hours to get ready for a night on the town (now you can just about conquer the world in one). You can fix dinner (with ‘’nothing’’ in the pantry), bath and feed the kids, do the dishes, check mails, encourage a friend and hang the washing. You can even use the bathroom and entertain your kids (all at once) – and all of this by the time that the parties of your youth usually had just gotten started.
And yet, at the same time, it feels like there is never quite enough time, and you can’t remember the last outing that you could just go to the shops and leisure around, aimlessly browsing through nice tops in boutique stores, just because you could. Now the closest you get to buying something new is when you are at the food chain with the clothing section and it’s a small victory when you can find shoes in your toddler’s size (knowing you will have to go through the exact same exercise again in two months because they just GROW so quickly)! But, yay, you just ticked off another item on your list.
You remember how, before earning the title of mom, you used to silently judge people with tantruming toddlers in public spaces. Now you give a knowing empathetic smile, silently grateful that yours is behaving modestly human today because frankly, you’ve learned how to pick your battles.
Yes, I am talking to you, MOMMY
If I could, I would sit you down, tell you to ‘’forget’’ about the kids for a minute and look me in the eye, while I tell you: Well done, good and faithful servant!
You ARE a great mom!
You ARE a good spouse (note how I said good there, not great)!
You ARE making an impact!
Yes, chances are that come Mother’s Day, you will still be the one taking care of most of the items on that tick list, putting everybody else’s needs before your own. Because you have come to realise that the day you became a mother, was also the day you gave up many of your ‘’rights’’ and the journey along which you are slowly learning to lay down your prior misconceptions and taking up your daily cross.
Don’t give up, because I know the truth is that you wouldn’t want it any other way, At the end of the day when two little puffy hands cup your face and pull you closer for sloppy kisses, you know you will never be the perfect mother, but to them you are more than enough, more than the cook, more than the cleaner, more than the teacher.
To them, you are EVERYTHING.
Happy Mother’s Day!
We salute you!
