The Day after Mother's Day

Yesterday was a fabulous day for many reasons.  

I ate a lot of really great food, received compliments from my sometimes (ahem) critical teenagers, and spent an afternoon at a garden center.  Pretty much my idea of heaven.  

I was also reflective most of the day.  It's so easy to forget just how demanding the job of mothering really is when you're swept up in the rig-a-ma-roll of it day after day. It becomes routine, its what we do.  And we lose sight of the contribution we make not only to our own family,

A collage made by my tech-savvy Grace of me and me and my 4gr8kdz.

but to the community, and the culture that we live in.   When a day like Mother's Day sneaks up on you and you really get a chance to think about the impact you have it's nothing short of mind-blowing.  For myself it took the words of an  8 year old who wrote, "you are awesome at yoga and you are pretty and you are just amazing because you are everything I need." Wow.  Whose heart wouldn't leap a little at those words of love?  

Another memory re-surfaced yesterday too.  I was reading a love letter that my mother-in-law wrote to her ailing mother.  One of the quotes was a comment about the wonderful life Dode, (my husband's grandmother) lived. She wrote that even bad times were okay because she  learned from them.  I couldn't even read the words they hit me so hard as it struck me the lessons we learn from our mothers.  I still feel pretty turbulent emotions when I think about my bad year experiences.  In the realm of battling cancer, my mother was there quietly taking care of me and the world I lived in.  I once asked her how she did it and she said, I did all of my crying before I got to your house.  And then when I left, I cried all the way home.

My daughter Grace probably struggled the most of my four kids the year I was sick.  And in putting it into perspective, she still handled it very well.  It wasn't until this year, almost four years later that she told me that my mother took her out for breakfast before taking her to school almost every day that she was in Eau Claire.  She took her out just to spend some time alone with her.  Apparently, they finished homework, played cards, and ate Perkins pancakes quite a bit.  I never knew.

Interestingly, I see this hidden amazingness in so many women that I know.  Perhaps it's the idea that we make the biggest impact on this world we live in by molding some really great little humans.  I'd like to think that is a pretty good reason to continue this never-ending job.  If not, it must be the collection of of play doh paper clip holders. Love and respect to all the Mothers.  Namaste.