Motherhood Lessons

Motherhood is not for the faint at heart. It is not for those that believe being a mommy is fun and games. It is for those that are willing to put their hearts on the line only to have it broken time and time again but find the overall rewards worth it. It is for the women who find giving life and planting seeds for the world rewarding.

As Mother’s Day comes, I reflect on lessons. Expect nothing in return and then, when you get it, you will be pleasantly surprised. Kids think the world revolves around them and mothers are there to serve. When you are given attention, you are to thank them for their time, at any age.

There will be plenty of excuses. There are busy playing with their toys, then with their friends, then driving somewhere, anywhere! Next comes a focus on college (which you are helping with odds and ends anyways!), dating, marriage, kids and life. There appears to always be something more important than you. It is like “Cat’s in the Cradle Song”, even when you have made the time, and still do. Many adult children simply won’t make the time for you. Accept this truth and you will be much happier. Just savor the time you are given.  You can’t change them so don’t try. With acceptance comes peace.

You are the number one cheerleader for your child. Have a "you can do it" attitude. Nobody cares more about your child than you, no other parent or teacher. They may not acknowledge you on the sideline and any yell may be met with extreme embarrassment.  You may be forbidden to wave but trust me, your being there is an esteem builder, it shows they matter. At the end of the game, they may run off to their friends but it registered and you saw what you created put forth effort. It is a win-win!

You were not put in the world to be a parent in order to be their best friend. Wait till you utter these words and watch their faces switch to creatures you don’t recognize. All the sudden, you swear you

never bore this hateful creature. But yet, being a mom means putting boundary lines in place, that means saying no, grounding, and saying uncomplimentary things at times, the things their friends wouldn’t dare say. You say it because you love them and they need to hear it. They won’t see it as love. They will hate you and swear you are mean and put up a wall of disbelief and anger towards you. It will break your heart but if not you, who will do this necessary step to growth? No one will tell you motherhood is easy.

Getting thrown up, pooped, and bled on is no fun but shit happens, again and again!  Be ready and muster through.  You also become a semi-paramedic yet never feel quite adequate to answer questions like do I take them to the ER, to the doctor, does it require stitches, is this temperature too high, will you throw up again, and are you contagious?  Get a Magic 8 ball.  It will help!

Talk about the stuff that makes your kids uncomfortable. Sound strange?  Talk about porn, sex, safe sex, birth control, Christian values, faith, child molesters, unsafe people, politics, drugs, divorce, etc.…  Better at home to bring them up, don’t leave it to school, the internet, strangers, peers, etc. Your belief system is a far better teacher. They will squirm and you may too but it gives them a chance to ask you and create a safe channel of communication lines. Make the world safer for your children and for our community, our world.

Be willing to understand you will make mistakes, plenty of them. You must own up to them for not doing so sends a message to your children that you are perfect, arrogant or unwilling to admit you’re wrong. None of us is expected to be a perfect mom; we are only expected to try our best with what we are given. If your kids love you, they will appreciate what they are given. If they can’t accept that, you must let them struggle with why. God placed them with you for a reason.

Walking into motherhood requires prayer. Some children you can’t survive with without it.  Your miracle didn’t get here without God. It will certainly go better for all if you continue to allow God’s miracles to happen in your life and theirs by asking for a little help!  

Some children, as they move on with their lives, may move completely out of your life. This is hard

as you age because, though the memories may forever make you feel young at heart, your body gives your age away.  They may put the priority of you in their life on a backburner more than ever just as you realize your life is coming closer to the end. Know in your heart that many mothers have shared this fate.  You are not alone.  As when your children slammed the door after screaming they hate you, you must leave the door closed much as it hurts. Continue to love them and continue to pray. You have been a mom and will continue to be till the end of your life but it is their choice to make. You planted the seed and showed them what unconditional love was. Now is the time to reflect on the precious memories if no more are created.

Though motherhood is full of heart aches, drama and trauma, it is also full of laughter, joy and pride. It is a time of celebration and a lifetime of memories. It is reminder of our Christian faith in that Mary, mother of Jesus showed how one so kindhearted and loving could raise a king meaning each and every one of us is capable of turning a single baby into someone who can change the world! 

For the Birthday of My Son

It was cloth diapers and tiny toes,

It was pacifiers with yawns so big they would fall out.

It was a wrapped child in toilet paper screaming with pride,

It was a child with hurt feelings with a blanket over his head trying to hide.

It was hands covered with mud that went straight to the mouth,

Pockets with bugs and coffee cans with all sorts of icky things,

It was handmade cards with dinosaurs and cartoon characters with poems

that would melt the heart.

It was birthday parties that brought joy to his face.

It was trips to the park feeding the ducks, watching him learn to kick a ball, ride a bike and chase a dog that ran loose in the neighborhood.

It was cheering him on at a soccer games. Seeing him sad when a girl broke his heart. Seeing him in his room studying and dreaming of a future career. 

It was hearing his yells in the night with growing pains in his legs.  

It was watching him plan his college years.  It was sneaking in his room at night,

even as he aged, to be able to give him the sign of the cross on his forehead like I did when he was young. I wanted God to watch him closely all the days of his life and to tell him I loved him while he lay sleeping, no matter his age.

It was watching him run around a track as hard and fast as he could. It was knowing after he ran, he would come up just to check on me and afterwards

thank me for just being there to support him. It was watching him graduate and become the fine man I knew through all those 2 a.m. feedings he would be.

It was planting a seed and trying to nurture it and standing back, as he became an adult and watching it grow.

It was watching him become a father and seeing new little lives like the one he had once been. It was seeing the things I saw in him in the ones he created. It was watching me leave a part of his life and feeling as if a part of him was gone forever. It was seeing him embrace a new chapter in his life I had raised him to foster.  

It was and is a beautiful ride today, on his birthday, and every day that God blessed me to be a part of. May he always know God intended him to be placed with me and I with him for this sole purpose.  May he age with grace, love and happiness. May he one day be able to write and feel exactly how I feel towards him towards his children. 

Happy Birthday Mike

With all my love,

Mom

Forgiveness for a Mother

The past few weeks have been a blur for me in many ways. The days have seemed to fly by full of new drama and trauma playing out with each and every phone call. The plot seems to constantly

change as my emotions go through a roller coaster ride that is full of more lows than highs. I manage to take one day at a time and realize again, nothing lasts forever. Not even after spending a life time without someone and finally, at age 50 finding them.

My mom and I reconnected almost two years ago. We had not seen each other in over 35 years. I had the chance to hear some I love you’s from a mother I never really knew. I am grateful because two weeks ago, she had a stroke. Life has changed permanently, for her and consequently for me. Now my days have been filled with phone calls with doctors, nurses and family relatives. There are always more questions than answers too.

By the time my sister and I got up to see her in Michigan, she had fallen in to a deep sleep and could not be roused. We were told she might never wake up and they were going to put in a feeding tube through her nose. The doctor suggested we go in first and have a few quiet moments to visit with her prior to the insertion. We went in, my older sister and I, before calling our brothers and other family members with an update. As we chatted over her head, we noticed her begin to twitch and squirm in her sleep. My sister left the room to go down the hall way. Not sure what to do, I laid my face up against her cheek and whispered “I love you Mom.” She began to cough and opened up her eyes. I leaned over in shock and asked her what she wanted. She stared at me and said “Water.” I ran into the hallway screaming for the nurses, I knew it was a miracle, she was not supposed to wake up! My sister and I’s hearts were elated.

Just as quickly, it was replaced with a melancholy feeling. We realized that this was part of our mom before us but also a shadow of who she was. She, Margie, was only half there, half of the time. The other half of the time, she was delusional. Her mind saw things the rest of us did not see, she recalled things that were not real, she created lies that she believed and had the attention span of a small child. I looked at her and wondered where my mother went. She was volatile, self centered, had the worst listening skills imaginable and no one in the room had the floor but her. Her attention span was that of a small child. Reasoning with her was not possible, if you needed to negotiate because she seemed to lack anything that required higher level brain processing. She would try to pop up and out of chairs with a left leg that was completely numb from her stroke with no feeling or ability to sustain her weight.

As we visited with her for several days, we found long visits exhausting. My sister and I took turns breaking down in to tears where there were no words we could say to comfort each other. There were times we would enter the room and she would not recognize us immediately. There were days when she demanded to go home or for us to call an ambulance and take her to the hospital. Thus, we would have to remind her she was already there. If her doctor did not come to her room, she wanted to be taken to the emergency room immediately and be seen there. Her demands were constant and unreasonable. We saw the look on the nurses’ faces that were assigned our mother and detected no one had her on their assignment two days in a row. We were sure that was by design. Whoever was assigned our mom on their shift, we felt a little sorry for because we knew she was a handful. She pretended she was in pain to get pain medicine, she said she was sick when she wanted attention, she tried to stand on her feet so much on aided that frequently she was put on waist restraints. It was the like the worst child in the kindergarten class. Wow, this was not the mom I had seen the last two years! It is like the stroke took away my mother and all that was left is some of the worst traits and exaggerated them.

We tried to explain to our mom she had a stroke, her brain was playing tricks on her. To see that childlike look in her eyes when she asked “You mean it is not real?” was heart wrenching but needed. Many times, it didn’t matter what we said, she was not coming out of the make believe land she was in. She remained delusional. Her left side is numb and so she cannot walk unassisted either. She can only eat thickened liquids due to some aspirations. Her life is not what it was and will never be.

This is not what we expected for a woman so full of energy. She has led a life full of bad choices; there is no doubt about it. But I still hoped her life would end well. Never in a million years did I envision her being in a nursing home at half mast. She doesn’t even know that is where she is going because no one wants to deal with the fit she will throw. All she knows is she is going to rehab. It feels as if we are lying to her by keeping her in the dark but we have no other options. She is not capable any longer of dealing with reality. The amount of tears and heart ache I feel inside is really nothing that can be expressed in words. I am grateful for the endearments she has expressed the last few years we reconnected. And I try to hold fast to those on the down days when the sorrow fills my heart. I missed out on a mother most of my life, my biological mother, found her and now I sit here and lost her again.

I recall sitting bedside and seeing my mom staring at my sister and me during one of her lucid moments. She then began to cry. As we watched her, she said, as she has stated so many times before to us, “I am so sorry that I let you down as a mother and was not there for you to a part of your lives.” I wonder why, even though we have told her countless times before, she does not realize we forgave her a long time ago. Perhaps it is because, even when she is in her sane state, she still has not been able to forgive herself. Forgiveness begins in the soul and comes from the love of God and of His will.

My mom believes in God. My mom, even in this state, must succumb to His will, that of forgiveness, forgiveness of her own sins. Until she does that, she will always feel tormented inside. That is a painful thing to see, as a daughter. Her time is going to be limited. Her moments of sanity are as well. I pray God teaches my mother to learn to live His word in those lucid moments before she passes. If not, may she find that eternal peace she has been so desperately looking for on earth one day. If not on earth, my you find in heaven Mom. All of us are forgiven our sins. All we have to do is ask.

As I turned to say good bye,
All I could do is cry.
One of my biggest fears
Is that the next time I visit, you won’t be here.
Please stay a few more years,
I don’t mind shedding a few more tears,
I want to cradle you like you once cradled me,
I want you to know that I love the life you gave to me.
Mom, I will always love you.

A Single Twenty Dollar Bill

A lot of years went by with no dialogue between the two. Many years had passed since they had seen each other, hugged each other or even made eye contact. Their relationship, whatever it was, however you defined it, was a thing of the past.

These two, mother and daughter, shared very little memories. There was a faint glimpse of laughter at a hotel during a weekend visit to town, a memory of a home shared where the two had resided in many moons ago and a connection via the usual exchanged cards, birthday and Christmas. Mother’s Days have came and went with a simple card mailed that said “Thinking of you with love.” There was even a phone call here and there made, with a gasp of surprise on either end to know they were, all these years later, connected, the bond somehow not totally broken.

Choices were made by the mother that led her life in a new direction, one that did not include her daughter. Choices were made by the daughter that excluded having the mother a part of her life, a part of her joys and her sorrows. She found others to confide in, to offer solace and to share memories of life with. These two lived, as if on separate continents but yet knew, in side, the bond of mother and daughter is never really broken. The years had been unkind to them both in many of the same ways and in different ways. But they both knew, in spite of it, their prayers were always inclusive of the other.

This mother grew up poor in money and rich in laughter. The daughter grew up much richer in money and short on laughter. Both had abusive husband experiences, hurt feelings from children disappointments, and health issues. Both shared vulnerability towards life and a sensitivity that lead to hurt feelings and wondering why life had dealt such a hard hand to them.

Then there was a twenty that is a twenty dollar bill in the mail. It was carefully tucked and folded inside of a birthday card that read ‘To daughter with love.” And this birthday, indeed, was special; it was one year out from a cancer diagnosis. This birthday left this daughter feeling grateful she was alive.

Cards had poured in the entire year from a mom besot with sadness that her daughter was going thru such a tough battle and she was powerless to do anything but say I love you in cards and letters to her daughter and remind her that she continued to pray for her healing from this battle. No phone calls were exchanged between the two, just an occasional update thru others to say ‘Your mom had more heart problems’ and a ‘Your daughter is quite sick from chemo.’

But that all changed, that day the twenty dollar bill came. It was a huge sacrifice from the mother to send that kind of money to her daughter, the one she had not seen in well over 37 years. She lived in a one bedroom apartment and struggled to make ends meet. In the midst of all this, she took and gathered up enough money to send her daughter that money with a note that said how very proud she was her daughter had fought the battle and won. It spoke in very few words of the love she felt brimming over for her daughter. Her daughter knew that day unlike every before; she was blessed indeed with a mother that loved her beyond words. She knew the twenty dollar bill would never ever be forgotten. It had arrived late because the mother had to wait to get paid to come up with the money. She told her daughter she wanted this birthday to be the most special one in her life. It was, because of this mother. It represented a token of her mother’s love. It proved without a shadow of a doubt that no number of years could take away the bond this mother and this daughter shared.