My kids always ask me what I want for ______ (fill in the blank with Mother’s Day, birthday, Christmas), and every time I tell them the same thing. Don’t get me anything. I don’t want stuff. Write me a letter and tell me what I’m doing right. Yet every time, I get a store-bought card with someone else’s words (and being boys, they are not so much into words as into the funny noises the body can make). So, either I’m not doing anything right or my kids are trying to tell me that they don’t like to write. Seeing that I used to make them write book reports over the summer and critiques of commercials they watched on public TV, I get that. When you’re a mom, you just never know if what you’re doing is right. Sometimes great ideas turn out to be mistakes. Sometimes mistakes turn out to be great ideas. I now know that forcing my kids to write did not foster a fondness of it.
A good friend of mine once said, it doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make with your kids, as long as there is love in the home and your kids feel it, that makes up for everything. That’s what I’m counting on to cancel out all the times I lost my temper or dropped the ball. That’s what I hope is true for all of us, stumbling through life, just trying to be the best mothers, daughters, wives, sisters and friends we can.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the great moms out there who are working hard to develop a product (kids) that will make a better future for everyone. And thanks to all the men who encourage us.
Peace, love, hope and hugs.
