A short word on Motherhood: Good on ya. If you’re a mother, and you’re reading this, and you’ve put forth the effort to be a good mother, regardless of the outcomes…good on you. This isn’t so much a treatise on motherhood as a short tribute. This false holiday, created by greeting card makers, I have to say…works. Mothers, more than any other demographic, deserve recognition.
My own mother, gone ten years, is missed every day, and she was far from perfect. Her mother, gone a decade and a half before my own mother shuffled off her mortal coil, was missed every day by my mother. We love our mothers. Oh sure, sociopaths, psychopaths, and other malpheasants don’t, but they are not quite human, so they don’t count in this. If your mother loved you, you feel it. She may have done a stellar job, or she may have done a crappy job, but the best job she knew how, and you know, especially if you are a parent now, how much that means.
And for that, they deserve this day, at the very least, to be made aware that others know of their sacrifices, labors, love and enduring pain. No, I don’t care about childbirth, because while painful, it is the briefest, yet (usually)most tangible pain a mother will experience, but the pain of watching them grow, learn, love, hurt and move on is far greater. Even while their love for us grows, their pride in us is unmatched, and unique to us, there is the pain that what was once part of them moves on. I miss mine. I was not a perfect son, and sometimes the knowledge of that is the revenge that my mother would never have sought, but it is there, and hopefully she can be proud of at least the wisdom that the pain brings.
If you are a son or daughter, acknowledge and respect the love of your mother. Appreciate her for what she is, for she won’t always be there. And love her back.
Happy Mother’s Day.
The sweetest sounds to mortals given
Are heard in Mother, Home, and Heaven.
~William Goldsmith Brown
As an addendum, I in no way meant that childbirth was a trivial pain, merely that the psychological pain, over the years, was longer and at least as painful. Apparently, as a man, I am wrong. My apologies for this. I would, however, request that this line not be the only thing you take away from your reading of Sundays blog.