Mom's...

This blog post originally debuted on Mother's Day, 2012... which was especially difficult for me this year...

Hey everyone. I’m hoping you're all having a great day? I’m trying, given the time of the year and all… I thought, for today, I’d write my blog post about Mother’s Day.

I’m a parent of three kids, as many of you already know. Being a Mom is, in fact, the toughest job I’ve ever had. I know, I know- that saying gets batted around frequently and because of that, I think many of us tend to let it fall on deaf ears.

This will be the first year in my many that I don’t send a charming card or overpriced flowers.

We all, I believe, think of our mom’s as invincible. Mom is the one who will scold our poor behavior; spouting off about how utterly disappointed they are in our grades/attitude/choices and then in the next breath, be the one to give us a hug and let us know it will all be okay. Mom washed away both the dirt and the tears,  she read us our favorite stories and found the calculator to help figure out the algebra homework, even when she'd rather have been watching “her stories”.

Moms give up so much when they make the transition from woman to so very much more. Mom isn’t a title to be thrown around lightly, either. One doesn’t become “Mom” simply by getting pregnant then forcing a child from her body.

Nope- Mom means you rock in a chair at 3 am when you just did it an hour before, a yawn and a bottle in hand; a smile on her lips and a soft hum of some nameless tune. Mom means you’ve traded away many of those wine infested play dates for juice boxes at the park.

Mom translates to a thousand miles in a van on empty so you can kick a soccer ball around and be one of the several kids to proudly wave their trophy. Mom means you decorate every free wall with Crayola drawings of horses and monster trucks, and Mom means free time disappears, replaced by parent conferences and balanced dinners that if you were really good, ended with brownies.

Mom equals a knight that fights off the monsters in the closet, the nurse who gives you medicine when you’re ill, the social worker who talks it all out with you, and then the housekeeper who mucks up the puke when the medicine doesn’t work- often times while telling you how bad she feels that you feel bad.

Moms don’t give up the title when you leave, either. A mom is the one person who you call in the middle of the night because your English Professor said your term paper was awful. Mom is the person you run to first to show off the big (or tiny) diamond that was just placed on your finger with a promise for the future.

Mom is the person you want at your side when you transition from woman to Mom… and even after the hurtful words and all of your eye rolls, she becomes the only person whose shoes you hope to fill.

I used to cringe when someone told me “You act just like your Mother.” In these last few months, the one’s following my mother’s passing, I’ve realized that for every time someone told me that, they’d grossly overestimated my abilities, for I could never be like her…not even close.

My Mom was the best. You may argue that, but in my eyes, I’ll win every time.

LCM