Ah, Mother’s Day.

I will admit, Mother’s Day (once I became a mother) was a very problematic day for me for many years.  It seemed like Mother’s Day brought more messes, more fighting, more tantrums about not wanting to go sing to the mothers with the other kids at church, and then even more tantrums after the singing was missed and the child couldn’t understand why we couldn’t do it all over again now that she’s changed her mind about wanting to sing.

Sigh.

Then I realized that although Mother’s Day is meant to be a day to honor our mothers, as a mother of small children it is really a day to honor your child’s attempts at honoring you.  It means possibly eating a breakfast you would never normally eat in a place you would never normally eat it.  It means discovering, via a laminated place mat with finger-painted handprints, that you are, in actuality, 74 years old, only look pretty on Thursdays, love shopping at Walmart, are always saying “go to bed!” and that your favorite food is hot dogs.  It may mean making meals, doing dishes, and picking up toys while being told nonstop by bright and shiny little faces about how lucky you are that you don’t have to do any work all day.

Once I let go of the idea that my children would all of a sudden, on the second Sunday in May, like everything about each other all of the time, discover a love for putting shoes in the closet and scrubbing dishes, and generally mature overnight, it suddenly got a lot better.  I began to remember how lucky I was to have shoes to put away, dishes to scrub and disagreements to solve.  Because all of that is motherhood too.  And I realized that Mother’s Day was most likely intended for adult children, who were now mothers and fathers themselves and understood, to honor their mothers.

So, to all the mothers in my life who have helped to raise, support, and inspire me, thank you.  To my own mom, who probably has more stories than she can count about Mother’s Day messes, fights, and other general disasters, I am sorry.  Truly.  And to my own children, I love you to absolute pieces.  I would not be nearly the woman I am without you and feel so humbled to have the honor of being your mother.

Now, I am going to play the Mother’s Day card and be a little self-indulgent as I share far too many images of my very own favorite little people: