Mother's Day

Many times, and for many people Mother's Day is not the ridiculous, greeting card smooshfest that we are taught to expect.

We're supposed to have well behaved children who lovingly bring us breakfast in bed with a side of diamonds.  

And when that doesn't happen, oftentimes we feel like something is lacking.

A few years ago I had an incredibly rough Mother's Day.  It was my first one as a parent of two children, and it followed the hardest few months of my life.  I had been struggling with depression, but didn't realize it.  I just figured that I wasn't very good at the whole mothering, stay-at-home thing and needed to suck it up and grow a pair and pull up my big girl panties and all that motivational crap we tell ourselves when life gets rough.

So that year when my husband picked me flowers and made me breakfast and did not get me a present because we were broke and that money would be better spent on things like food, I felt like I wasn't appreciated.  I felt like he didn't understand how hard everything was for me and was glossing over everything I did as Mama.

Obviously that wasn't true.  Obviously I had issues with myself and just projected them onto my poor husband.  I will forever cringe over the memory of that Mother's Day.

I no longer feel like I did that year.  Parenting two children is still extremely difficult, but my head is in a better place and I don't want or need a special, store-bought gift to show me that I am appreciated.

You know what I want?  I want the pancakes my husband made for me.  I want all of the handmade cards and notes my children created.  I want the hugs and kisses and time.  I want to make cakes and desserts for my own mother and mother-in-law.  I want to show those mothers that I appreciate and love them.

I want my rowdy, dirt-covered children to act just like they always do because that is who they are and why I love them.

I want to spend the day with extended family, cooking together, eating together, laughing together.

And I want to end the day with my oldest child comforting the storm-scared youngest by letting her lay in his bed and teaching her rock-paper-scissors.

And yes, there was a nice, store-bought gift.  But it pales in comparison to the rest of the gifts I was given on Mother's Day.

(I'm wearing the newly-shortened Washi Dress! MUCH BETTER!)