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Mother’s Day is over

“You know Mother’s Day is over right?” My 8-year-old son made that clear first thing this morning.  The egg, drums and golf are celebrated for an entire month. Even vinegar gets thirty days.  The person responsible for bringing a life into the world gets 24 hours and that’s it.  Sure, for about a week, we try to use the holiday to guilt our children into behaving. Unfortunately,  the uterus doesn’t have the same magical power as an imaginary obese man in a red velvet suit.  

Television ads give us such false hope about Mother’s Day.  The pretend mom in the Kmart commercial looks so relaxed on her new patio furniture.  The mother in the Walmart commercial is rested and has all the Faded Glory shirts her heart desires.  The woman in the CVS commercial is being pampered with a box of chocolate and laundry detergent.  This is going to be great!   We buy it hook, line and sinker.    I won’t have to do anything that day.  

My children let me sleep in an extra 10 minutes.   They offered to cook breakfast, but I knew I would have to clean up.  So, we let Tim Horton and Ronald McDonald cook for us.   I saw countless photos on Facebook of mothers “enjoying” brunch at a fancy eatery.  The food may have been hot and delicious, but going to a restaurant with three children is exhausting.  

I spent most of the day in Yoga pants.  I still cleaned and did laundry.   I received a pair of fabulous shoes and an espresso machine from my baby daddy.  My teenage son woke up at 11 a.m.  That’s early for him.   My daughter gave me a beautiful card and seeds she planted in a plastic container.  “We need to water the plant,” I said a few hours after she presented it to me.  My daughter took a deep breath and replied, “But I gave it to you.  It’s yours now.”  So much for not having to do anything.  The truth is I like taking care of them.  I like feeling needed.  

As mothers we are constantly doubting ourselves.   With all the whining, crying, complaining and fighting we must be doing something wrong.  It often seems like nobody appreciates what we do. Then, one day a year we get things like this: 



  

And we carry on doing the job only a mother can do.   If my son loves me with that bad haircut and only four fingers I am doing something right.  

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