Mother's Day Schmother's Day

I'm out for the summer!!  So I get to blog again!!  Yay!

So, yesterday was Mother's Day.  Growing up, I always got very excited about this holiday.  I got to make crafts and cards for the woman who was my world.  As I got a little older I understood that this was a day of honor and respect for this hard-working, much-deserving lady who had taught me all I knew of being good.  I felt a lot of pride about showing her how much I appreciated her.  When I became a mom, I looked forward to it in a new light altogether.  This time it would be about ME!!  Sure, I'd call my mom and all, but I would now be the one putting her feet up and getting all the showers of attention.

I don't know what happened to this holiday between honoring my mother and becoming a mother myself, but it definitely was not as I'd pictured it.  My children made things for me.  Things I'd have to keep forever, but which had no purpose at all.  I got to sit and listen to off-key songs my children made up for me.  And they cooked for me.  I mean....good grief.  I had to eat every bite of the breakfast in bed (no item of which was even related to a breakfast food).  Then I got to clean up their mess from making it.

I got to go out to lunch and order whatever I wanted!  And then share it with all the children because of course they no longer wanted what they had ordered.  And so it went....for years.

I came to dread the holiday.  No matter what I knew from experience, I would always let hope build inside of me and be sorely disappointed when I did not wake up to roses and a clean house and a personal masseuse and gift cards to everywhere....*sigh*

Yesterday, my eleventh Mother's Day as a mother, I climbed, gasped for air, took no breaks, and climbed some more until finally I got all the way over myself.

I have three children who look at me with untainted trust and love.  I get to see the world adore these precious beings and know they are mine.

Yes, I will take a bath right now in the bath salts you made for me, even though it's scented with ginger and I hate ginger and will secretly gag as I sit in a bathtub of ginger and then go to bed smelling like ginger and probably have nightmares of being baked and painted and then running from a fox.

Yes, I will sit very still and let you massage my feet though it feels as though you plan to rub the skin right off and then put cold lotion on, the amount of which could soften the skin of a third-world country until you decide that I've been "pampered" enough and move on, leaving me to slip and slide to the nearest towel.

Yes, I will gladly hear the piano piece you so lovingly composed for me everyday within my hearing as you yelled, "Mama, don't listen right now!" and then continued to play the same bars over and over and over until I was sure the piano could play it for me all by itself.

Yes, I will love you.  Forever.  I will celebrate Mother's Day in whatever fashion you present it to me because this day is not about being a mother.  It's about being YOUR mother.  And I will never deserve that.