My Mother

I have spent some time over the past few days thinking about mothers, and in particular about my own mother in approaching this Mother’s Day.  I have been putting together a card for her that I saw on Pinterest a few weeks ago, and this card involves cutting and gluing…2 things that I hate above all others.  Why I hate cutting and gluing is a blog for another day…but I was sitting there working really hard on this card for my mother, all the while the demon that lives inside me was screaming.  He hates cute and pretty, and this is nothing but cute and pretty.  My demon is also a blog for a different day, and by the way he hates Pinterest!  Anyway I was sitting working ever so fervently on this project for my mother, doing things I hate, with an entity writhing inside me…finally the thought struck me, why are you doing this?!  So I have been thinking about why I did that…what is it inside us that makes us do things we wouldn’t do for anyone else, but we will willingly do for our mothers?

I can’t answer that question for anyone else, but over the course of the last few days I have come to understand the answer for me.  I have thought a lot about my mother, what she has taught me and how I came to feel the way I feel about her.  I think we all love our mothers…even if they do things that hurt us, and some people have horrible mothers…but even then I think we all have a need inside us to love them.  They gave birth to us in most cases, they raised us by sacrificing their own needs and wants, and they continue to love us despite our often stupid behavior.  My mother once told me that I was the light of her life, and that has stuck with me to this day.  It was a family home evening we were doing and we all had to write down on a strip of paper what we loved about our other family members…and to this day I can still see her handwriting on the strip that says “she is the light of my life!”  It is the only one I remember, but the rest were written by my brothers that were there, and all they ever wrote was that I made a great ball to throw around.  Anyway, that was my mother, and she was always that way…I don’t think any of us could ever doubt her love for us, as she gave her love freely and openly.

 My mother taught me what love is by loving me, no matter what I did that was monumentally stupid.  My mother, who was a custodian at a church building, taught me that the only way to listen to Neil Diamond was at full blast in the cultural hall while you were cleaning.  My mother taught me respect by showing me what respect was.  She taught me to learn by learning with me.  She taught me to enjoy the little things in life by making everything fun.  We used to stop and get an ice cream cone on the way home and we would race to see who could eat theirs first…I still lose to this very day!  I remember being a child and being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up…the only thing I could every think to answer was “mom”.  The only nightmare I remember having as a child was that someone took my mom from me…I woke up screaming.  When I went to school I was more concerned about what mom would do without me there than what I was facing in school.

 Understand that I am the last of 7 children that my parents had, and my mother gave birth to me at home on her bed early on a Sunday morning.  My father did the catching and cutting, but my mother went through that for the 7^th time far from a hospital.  I watched my mother growing up making everything work as best she could, whether it was money or one of my siblings doing something that caused her heart to break, she made it work and got up every day to face the world again.  I have seen the great times, and I have seen the really bad times…and someday I will have to see her leave this life.  I can very easily say that she has been my best friend, and really the only lady I can talk to about anything.

 I have gone through some horrible times in my life, but the one thing that has always been constant in my life is the love my mother has always shown me.  My mother loves rainbows, she still comes to get me when she sees any, and what she doesn’t realize is that she was my rainbow when all I saw was gray.  No matter how difficult the depression became, all I would need was to hear her loving voice and I could see the color in the world again.  When she would visit, I swear she brought a rainbow with her to brighten my life!  Even to this day my mother is a rainbow in my life, she surrounds herself with them, and she is teaching my children to see the rainbows as well. 

 So why did I cut and glue so fervently for my mother…because my mother is my rainbow!  Here’s to you Mom!  Thank you for being my rainbow, thank you for loving me, and thank you for everything you taught me about being a mother.  I pray I have made you proud.  Because Mom, you light up my life!  Happy Mother’s Day!  I love you.