Happy (belated) Mother’s Day

So Mother’s Day, May 14, has just passed and I more or less forgot all about it at the time. Does that make me a bad person? My mother passed a few years ago and I don’t have any children of my own, so there is no mother in my immediate family I could celebrate anyway.

However, as somebody said, even if you aren’t a mother, everybody has had one, so I decided to write a salute to mothers.

Mothers aren’t just the person who carried you in their bodies, they are also people who raised you, protected you, set you straight and smacked your butt when they thought you needed it.

Sometimes they even decide to not see what you are doing, let you make mistakes on your own so you can learn the hard way, because they know just telling you what will happen won’t work.

I know my mother closed her eyes to a few things my brother and sisters did (and yes, a few things that I did as well).

We thought we were getting away with something, got burned or bruised or whatever but never told mom and dad about it, learning a lesson about consequences in the process.

Our mother taught us a lot by what she did and didn’t do.

She was very private and didn’t talk a lot about her personal health.

However, she did tell us when she was diagnosed with MS, told us about the spinal tap procedure used to diagnose it and the experience of having it done after taking a valium (“You still feel the pain, you just don’t care,” she said).

But after that, she never talked a lot about it, just took the pills prescibed and sometimes cursed when her weakness made it impossible to do what she wanted without help.

She was incredibly stubborn about doing things for herself and only asked for help when she absolutely couldn’t do it herself – like getting things down from a high shelf.

If it was one of the lower shelves, she would brace herself against the counter with one hand and reach with the other.

We knew she was in pain at times, but she never talked about it.

I wished she had acknowledged it to us, not that we could have done anything about it, but sharing it might have helped a bit.

Mothers sometimes put up with a lot of “stuff” from kids when they are younger. They don’t realize their parents just want to protect them as much as possible.

Moms don’t stop loving their kids (although they certainly do express some anger!).

I know at least one mother who said if she had known what a pain having kids would be, she never would have done it. She still loves her (now grown) children dearly, but ...

Anyway, my love and respect goes out to all the mothers out there and I hope you had a great Mothers’ Day.