Happy Mother's Day!

When I was younger, and I mean a LOT younger, maybe about eleven? I was lying in bed one night, thinking about the future (I was always a bit precocious when it came to such matters). I was never a cross-the-bridge-when-you-get-to-it kind of person until I was much older, so it seemed to my child mind that decisions were set in stone. I started to cry quietly, and when my mom came in to kiss me good night I told her "I don't think I want to go to college. I think I just want to be married and have kids." She hugged me and told me not to worry about any of that until the time came. On the night of my thirteenth birthday, again she found me in tears in bed (this time because I didn't want to grow up). I can't promise that it didn't happen again towards the end of my teens. I have always had this thing about the passage of time--it saddens me like nothing else. Home movies can reduce me to tears if I think too much (even when watching my brother dance his "beat-its out").

That must be the hallmark of a happy childhood--its home being in the long past one of the saddest things you can think of. And strewn liberally throughout my memories of childhood are images of my mother. My mother waiting for us at the door after school. My mother mixing up our mugs of chocolate milk for our nighttime snack. My mother quizzing us for science tests, or making us rewrite our sloppy spelling homework that we erased so hard the paper tore because neatness counts. My mother talking us through emotional moments like not wanting to grow up, or when that darn bosom was going to start to grow because everyone else's had. The usual stuff.

I don't have children (and as I had another birthday last week I wonder if I ever will), but I know that if/when I do that I want to be a mother just like mine is. Just simply full of love. So that must be the hallmark of an excellent mother--wanting to be just like her, and wanting to somehow break all laws of physics to go back in time and stay a kid forever because she's just so darn good at being a mom.

So, to my mother, and to all you mothers out there, happy mother's day. My sentiment comes late, but it is no less true and heartfelt even at this late hour in the day. Cheers!