I know that I never appreciated my mother fully until I had children. If I’m really owning my embarrassing shortcomings I have to admit that even now I take her for granted. And I should know better because I know how awful it is to work the hardest I’ve ever worked and stress the most I’ve ever stressed about being the “BEST MOM POSSIBLE” only to feel like I am constantly failing. But the truth is that being a mom is a lot like being air. Very few people regularly take a moment to appreciate the invisible tasteless gas that keeps us alive. But when the air contains too much pollen or we walk through a cloud of cigarette smoke we all wrinkle our noses and complain. Being a mom is just like that. No one pats us on the back for cooking dinner every night, or taking our kids to the doctors, or not forgetting to pick up our kids and the neighbor’s son from football practice (true story). No one notices the good things. But your kids always recognize the more unpleasant parts of mothering. Like when you are taking their Xbox away because they got a D in French, or when you make them pick up the dog poop, or insist they shower every day—which if you have teenage sons you know is an absolute imperative. This is when you are, at least in their eyes at that moment, “THE WORST MOM EVER.”
But kids will be kids. They don’t know any better (yet). At least they have an excuse as to why they don’t get just how hard momming really is. But me, I know better. I’m forty-three-years-old not twelve. And I’ll admit that I still occasionally freak out when my mom is momming. I literally can’t stop myself. It’s usually when she is trying to step in and give me some perspective about a situation. I don’t mean to do it I just suddenly turn into a raving lunatic sixteen-year-old, complete with whining, eye-rolling. And though I’ll usually have a moment of out of body clarity and think, “WTF are you doing?” I can’t seem to stop myself.
Then I had this dream the other night. It was one of those completely vivid, live and in color dreams. I could draw it for you, I can remember what it smelled like, I can tell you what the carpeting felt like on my bare feet. And it was about my mom. In the dream my husband and I were living in my parents’ basement. That’s not the funny part. Everyone thinks that is the funny part, but it’s not. So my husband and I were asleep in our basement bedroom and something woke me up. I looked into the doorway and someone had placed a four foot concrete statue of the Virgin Mary there. So I sat bolt upright and thought to myself that someone had either broken in and put the statue there or a ghost had put it there. It’s my dream and those were my options. So the funny part for me is that I ran as fast as I could, screaming “MOM” at the top of my lungs all the way up to the second floor master suite where my parents were sleeping. It’s funny because as much as I adore my mom—and I do—she is not particularly good in crises situations. She’d be the first to admit it. We all have our strengths and crises management isn’t hers. So at first blush it was really bizarre that if I had thought it was an intruder I didn’t wake up my very strong, protective, and very good at crises management husband who happened to be sleeping next to me in this dream. And I didn’t yell for my father who actually did find an intruder in my room when I was twelve and took care of him (saving that one for Father’s Day). So like that’s the guy I should want, right? But I screamed for my mommy. Like a terrified toddler.
Here’s what I’ve decided after hours of trying to figure out what on earth my subconscious was trying to tell me and it’s this: my mother is my air. In fact, all of us mothers are air to our children. Our love and support might seem invisible—and not because our kids take us for granted but because we are constant. We are always there. We watch every move our children make. Even when our children think we don’t know anything about them we actually know them better than we know ourselves. We are forever choosing whether to step in and catch them or to let them fall. But we see. Everything. We are there. Whether they know it or not. Whether they are sixteen or forty-three. And for that I thank you, mom.
For laughter and inspiration read my book The Working Mommy's Manual, available on Amazon.
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