I am not a Mother’s Day fan from the get-go. Every day is mother’s day. But I am getting spammed left and right with “Send Mother’s Day flowers” and “50% off Mother’s Day Flowers” emails and The Commander is still living quite vivaciously (and I have preemptively called her since I will be busy early tomorrow and she will be busy later on), so it is hard to ignore the fact that tomorrow is the big day. So here goes. Thank you (you know who you are) for not buying me beautiful living houseplants this year. As you know, I have a black thumb! I kill plants. I don’t *try* to kill plants. I try to follow the care and watering instructions. I *care* about plants and I don’t like to kill them. When they are placed under my care and then die (and they always do), guess what? I feel guilty! And that is not a good thing. Why? Because I am a moom. By definition, I already bear enough guilt to go around the earth about three times. Did I do this right? Did I do that right? Was I too hard on my kids that one time those 5000 times? Should I have nagged them harder about their homework or cleaning their rooms? What about the times I was too tired to play one more game with them? Heck, that was most of the time, since I am not much of a game player. Did I let them watch too much TV? Should I have put them in soccer? Or dance? Should I have let them have a dog or a cat? What about that day I forgot to feed them and they ended up making their own spaghettios? (Yes, they did eat spaghettios and other junk food.) Did I read to them enough? Well, I *know* I read to them enough. That’s a no brainer. But still.

I think my kids have turned out pretty well despite all the mistakes I made and whatever kind of nonsensical crap I tried to beat into their brains. I miss them. But I don’t want to be “honored” for having them. I don’t need flowers or candy or brunch at some restaurant (with a corsage pinned to my pastel wool jacket (yikes)) or random knick knacks. Especially not random knick knacks! I did what every other mother does, which is to do my best. Every day, all day, 24 hours a day. Celebrating the good times and worrying and fussing through the bad times and suffering endless guilt over how I could have handled something better. And guess what? I am still doing all that, except that now I do it long distance and with my mouth shut. If I can manage to keep my mouth shut. Your mileage may vary on that.

Every day is mother’s day. Y’all have a good one tomorrow. Dog (and other aminal) moms are absolutely included in my wishes. Don’t fergit t’ click on th’ pic so ya can see the cuts ‘n’ bandaids ‘n’ things on Lizard’s knees.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.