Thoughts on Mother's Day

Yesterday (Mother's Day) my 4yo woke me up at 6:30 am. She busied herself with something for a few minutes, so I opened my computer and wrote this.

It's mother's day! And I am a mother. I am not a goddess. I am not a saint. I am not an angel. I am Wile E. Coyote and perfection is the Road Runner. There have been times in my life when I yearned to be a mother and couldn't. There have been times when I was a mother and would have offered up the title to Mephistopheles in exchange for a few hours of sleep. At times I have wept with transcendental joy at the profound miracle of these precious tiny individuals, and hummed and sang and nearly burned up with the honor of being the one who got to care for them. At times I have wept with the crushing burden of being that one and allowed my gaze to flick to the road and contemplate, even for a second, on the possibility of just running away.

Most days fall somewhere between transcendental and crushing.

Mothers are not more blessed and sacred and noble than any other person. To claim so is unloading shovelfuls of weight on us that frankly makes it harder to do what we have to do. Also what we love to do, yearn to do, loathe to do. Choose to do. I am a mother. And I am flawed and messy and stumbling around making all this up as I go along. I don't have the time or the balance to stand on a pedestal. I need to be down on my bare feet, down on my knees at times, in the muck of life. But by all means, give me some chocolate today and an extra hour to sleep in. And give me a day when I'm reminded to think about my own mother, mother-in-law, and leagues of women, with or without children, who don't have the time or balance for a pedestal but are just their badass selves, down here with me, making this all up as we go along.