Mother’s Day Weekend has passed again and as I sit in the after glow with my Monday morning coffee I am filled with an abundance of gratitude so acute it almost hurts. It is a special day for me, special because I have been in active duty now for 35 years. Plus 15 years as a grandmother. I wouldn’t trade a single day. Not even the stormy ones.
Yes, it’s true…I had an early start. Sometimes life throws you a curve ball and you hit a home run.
Although, I didn’t wake one day and say, “Gee…I think I’ll try being a sixteen year old mom, won’t that be a smart idea!” I did learn more from that rocky road than all of the other hard knock classes I took put together.
I learned about unconditional love. I learned about commitment. I learned about priorities. (You learn about that sort of thing in the middle of the night with an asthmatic child who can’t breathe and you haven’t slept in three days.) I learned about money. I learned about not having any.
Yep…kids teach you everything. All of mine have taught me new things. My oldest, being the pioneer daughter, blazing the trail for the others, had it the hardest. She had to dig her way through the hardest clay, my skills as a parent, untried and alone for the most part. We experimented together. Frick and frack, figuring it out as we went along. We learned a lot together. The rest of them should send her Mother’s day cards.
When she was 16, she wrote a poem and gave it to me for Mother’s Day.
I appeared like lightning piercing the sky;
Greatly unexpected, a hindrance was I.
Washing away goals, changing dreams like the tide,
I crushed her youth the moment I arrived.But her love flourished with each passing day,
As she accepted her life, the gift that I gave.
Our life was not charted, predicted, or planned;
We faced our troubles hand in hand.They flooded our lives, right from the start,
But made us two people; stronger of heart.
She welcomed my presence for she did know,
That when a storm goes by, it leaves a rainbow.
I CRIED……
But it was true. All of my children are exquisite rainbows with the most glorious colors in the universe.
I know that all of the mothers out there feel the same way about their rainbows too. So for mothers everywhere this weekend, I am sharing my gratitude for all of our children and for everything they have taught us, shown us and shared with us.
For the gift of being a mother.
Happy Mother’s Day Moms.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptkWYhX79N8]I have been blessed.
*Original post from 2008 updated to reflect current Mother’s Day Gratitude. I am grateful always.
