When It’s Not All Cards and Sloppy Kisses.
The night before Mother’s Day, I posted on Facebook that I was “gearing up for my day of sleeping in, receiving adulation and general sloth.” I did sleep in, by my definition, but still woke up long before my children stirred. As in recent years past, I patiently waited in bed, reading my book and enjoying the coffee my husband, David, brought me.
When it came time to go to church, I got up and got dressed. “Aren’t you going to wake the kids up to go with you?” David asked. He knew I had given them three suggestions of Mother’s Day gifts, and Suggestion #1 was that they go to church with me. “No,” I said, “it’s not a ‘gift’ if I have to make them go.”
On the way to church, tears slid down my cheeks as I recalled when they couldn’t wait to wake me up at the crack of dawn, eagerly presenting me with handmade cards and macaroni art and cold toast with too much jam. One year, my daughter even made a menu for me on which she had listed everything in the kitchen which she knew how to make and serve. I still have it around here somewhere.
“Well, those days were sweet,” I thought, “and they are still thoughtful kids. I know they were up late last night. I’m sure they will have something for me when I get home.”
On the way home from church, I stopped off at the Eagle Rock and shared a blessing for Mother Earth. I vowed to blast all my disappointment out into the atmosphere to be incinerated by the blazing hot sun.
Back at home, I discovered one child still sleeping and the other engrossed in a video game. I decided against reminding either of them of Suggestion #2: clean up the side patio, mainly because the heat was already melting the soles of my shoes.
Just as I was about to pick up my book again, David said, “The hot water heater is still leaking. A LOT. Do you want to go to Home Depot with me to look for a new one?”
“Not really.” I sighed, “but I will go if you want me to go. ” He nodded, and said, “we can all go and get something to eat while we’re out.”
We coerced the kids into our Odyssey van and headed toward Home Depot. “We could get sushi for dinner,” my husband said as we passed by our favorite spot. I sighed, recalling Suggestion #3: a sunset picnic dinner on my favorite local hilltop, with takeout from the local organic restaurant. The water heater situation had ruled that one out, I supposed, and sushi would still be a treat. “Sure,” I said, my begrudging acceptance thinly veiled.
After a heated debate over features, type and costs, while the tweens glowered, we settled on a choice with the least eye-watering price tag. This was definitely not a budgeted expense. I took a picture of it and smirkily posted “here’s my Mother’s Day gift!”
After hauling it out to the van, however, we discovered the cargo area full of the garage sale leftovers I had forgotten to deliver to the thrift store. Bad mom. Sweating and swearing, David finagled the beast between the boxes and we drove home in resigned silence. At least mine was.
“We can let the old tank drain while we go out to eat,” David suggested. “Where will we drain the water from our old tank?” I queried, knowing how precious water is in Southern California, especially in the summer. Being the eco-worrier that I am, I desperately wanted to put that precious liquid to beneficial use.
“We can all take long hot showers,” David offered. Great idea, I thought. A long shower is a treat I rarely allow myself. Maybe I’ll get an indulgent Mother’s Day moment after all. Then I remembered a voicemail from a friend earlier in the day, saying she’d spotted head lice on her son, my kid’s playmate. “Let me check the kids for lice before we throw them in the shower.”
Sure enough, I spotted some tiny nits on one of the heads, the one with long, thick curls. This not being our first head lice rodeo, I dug out the awful chemicals and combs. David and I worked together to comb out the nits, reducing the ordeal from two hours to one. We sent both kids off to their respective showers, the nit-free child howling. “But I was going to take my shower later, before bed!” “We won’t have any hot water then,” David reminded them.
I loaded up the washing machine with the bug-infested bedding. Another “beneficial use” of that water, I consoled myself.
While the kids sobbed in their respective showers, I poured myself a glass of wine and I leaned back against my Atlas cedar tree and told him my troubles. If Atlas can hold up the world, he can bear up under my petty grumbling. Resentment purged, I vowed, once again, to let it all go.
Back in the van to go to dinner, David asked again, “Sushi?” My resolve vanished and I groused, “that’s ffffffine” – my begrudging no longer thinly veiled. Which means David drove to Suggestion #3, the local organic cafe, and my spirits lifted again. He gets to live another day.
Our trek up the steep, dusty path to my favorite lookout point felt a forced march. I enjoyed a sumptuous salad, fresh peach cobbler, and the sullen silence of my children, latter part not so much. They both had their noses in books, the only words spoken by either of them being, “I have homework to do. Can we go home now?”
Freed of their family duties, the kids retreated to their lairs while I helped David dislodge the old hot water heater and heft the new one into its cramped enclosure in our cramped basement. No rest for him, either, this being the second major home repair of the weekend. Just yesterday, he changed out a faulty capacitor on the air conditioning compressor. Chores completed, he and I collapsed on the couch to catch a mindless show before our well-deserved sleep.
Just as I can sink into my couch crater, my son appears at the doorway, rubbing his eyes. “Mom, can you rub my back?” I choked back my first not-fit-for-print reply, but then I saw the longing in his eyes. “Of course,” I say. As I stood on a narrow bench, so I could reach him in his top bunk bed, I thought about how truly blessed I am to have this tender tween who still wants my comfort at the end of a day. And how grateful I am for the one in the next room who has assured me that my gift “is coming.”
Between the home repairs and the nits, the grousing and the brooding, this was not the Mother’s Day of my dreams. But it truly was a mother’s day. Despite what the trad wives might depict, motherhood is not comprised of picture-perfect days, surrounded by adoring children in spotless homes where nothing ever breaks. It’s as messy and painful as the processing of birthing itself. And just as rewarding—when I let it be simply as it is.
My Mother’s Day gift isn’t “coming;” it’s something I receive every day, in the form of the random “I love you!” from my son as he dashes off to school, and the “Mom, do you want to read with me?” from my daughter at night. In my anticipation of this day, I overlooked the sheer beauty of the Every Day. I get to be a mother every day of their lives and for this I do give thanks. Mother’s Day isn’t something to be celebrated only on the second Sunday in May.
We’re traversing a new phase and, like actors at an audition, none of us quite understands our roles here yet. One thing I do know is that I will continue to show up for them, however and whenever they need as they continue to grow and evolve– as best I can. For now, I’m content to collapse into bed and call it a day. A mother’s day.
