Mom Love

I am not really a “kid” person. You couldn’t pay me enough money to babysit other people’s kids when I was a teenager. I don’t particularly think babies are cute and refuse to change diapers (except my own kids). But somehow, I adore being a mother.

I love the way Brady calls me “mama” and how Noah still kisses me in front of his friends. I love holding their hands and making them breakfast in the morning. Secretly, I like it when they are mildly sick and just want to snuggle and lie in bed with me all day. There is so much joy in being a mother. You know what I am talking about – the depth of “mom love” is unreal!

Every kid deserves a mom. And if for whatever reason a child cannot be with his birth mom, he should have someone to tuck him into bed every night; someone to hold him close when he is scared; and someone to make an obscenely big deal about his birthday.  Every child should have a mom to call his own.

I was abundantly blessed in the mom department. This is my mom –

She is very cool. Well, she wears mom jeans, fanny packs, and really bad swimsuit covers, but other than that, she is cool. She taught me how to be a mom. As a kid, I assumed everyone had a mom who made them breakfast every morning and took them to soccer/dance lessons/swim lessons/piano practice/track meets for years. Of course my mom and dad drove three hours to see me run a 5k cross country race, of which they really only saw me run approximately 30 seconds. Doesn’t every 30-year-old still get an Easter basket?

Growing up, your way of life is your perspective of reality. I had no idea that every child did not have access to this kind of mom. In fact, I often gave my mom a hard time about a few areas where I thought she was deficient: 1) She could not French braid my hair (the nerve of her) 2) She could not sew a homemade Halloween costume for me (so I had to resort to trash bags the year I went as a California raisin) and 3) She would not drive in the snow, so I was forced to stay home on snow days (gasp).

Never mind the fact that she was a military wife, moving two kids around the country, having to find new doctors, enroll in new schools, and be a single parent while my dad was on TDY trips. Or the fact that while she often had a job to contribute financially to our family, she always made sure she was home before we got out of school. Or that she taught us really important things like acceptance, patience, humor, and love.

As Mother’s Day approaches, I am so incredibly humbled by all of the “mom love” I have received my entire life. Thanks mom.