Motherhood is a marvelous institution and those who matriculate there are the wonder of humanity. The school of motherhood offers no easy courses. It is a lifelong commitment to learning, and to the giving of one’s self completely. Girls start training to be mothers as soon as they can hold a baby doll.
Motherhood is the highest calling of the gentle sex. I say this knowing full well that many people will virulently disagree with me. That’s fine: those people do not really understand just how important the roll of a mother is. I challenge the thinking that the giving of life is nothing more than an inconvenient limitation to women. I can’t think of more honorable work. Work that has eternal significance.
When you are a kid you don’t really think about your mother’s life before she had you. The moment you met her she would never be the same. You only ever knew her as a mother. Because of this, you have a special intimacy with her not afforded by anyone else. You don’t have to do anything to win her confidence. She was someone you could trust immediately. When you got older you realized how selfish and needy you were as a child, and how selfless and caring she was: your alma mater.
I am at the age that I am beginning to understand what the phrase young mother means. It is really the same miracle of motherhood just from an adult’s perspective and not a child’s. These are the mothers who are barely more than girls themselves, still in the flower of youth, whose children do not realize how young their mothers actually are. You see these young mothers trying to round up their children at church, or throwing a birthday party at the park, fussing over the details like cupcakes and snacks. So much life is happening at a child’s birthday party. I’m not sure birthday parties would happen without mothers. So much youth, health, and vibrancy. You see them dragging the whole family out to take family pictures even though everyone knows that the baby won’t look at the camera and the dad is going to complain about wearing a suit in the yard. It is the mothers who know that one day in 15 years everyone will be so grateful for these frozen moments when everything was just perfect. Mother’s have foresight like that.
I think of how much love a mother has for someone they hardly know, although they know them more than anyone else. Even if a child is as ugly as homemade soap, and mean as a striped lizard, a mother will love it. It is a good thing too, because we all need love. And today we celebrate that love.
Happy Mother’s Day.
Mostly From Memory 