Mom, mommy, mama

Ah, Mother’s Day. As I write this, I’m thinking “everyone has a mother,” right? One way or another, there was a mom-person for each of us. It stands to reason it should be easy to write about the celebration of motherhood, shouldn’t it? From the get-go, motherhood has been complicated for me—but I’m sure it is for lots of moms. I struggled with being a patient mom. I struggled with bonding. After one pregnancy, I suffered from postpartum depression but only figured that out many years after the fact. This year, I’ve been thinking of all the people I know whose moms weren’t “Hallmark Greeting Card Moms.” I sure as heck wasn’t a greeting card mom, but I am a mom.

Advertisers often use a perfectly coiffed mom who seems to have it all together all day, every day. Those advertisement moms are all perky, combed and sassy while they mop up poop and wee. Obviously, the creators of this parallel-motherhood-universe have never changed a loaded diaper at three in the morning. Real moms aren’t perfect. Real moms have spit-up on their shoes and baby poo under their fingernails.

As a young mom, I wondered who the H E double-diapered bum those picture-perfect moms were. Advertising Mom wasn’t like many of the moms I knew. Nope. My mom never wore a frilly apron over a flowerprinted dress. My mom often wore a kerchief to keep her hair under control. My beautiful mom was a real person. She wore shorts in the summer and dungarees with rolled-up cuffs (she was quite short) in the cooler weather. Mom made her fashion statement wearing one my dad’s old dress shirts as an apron/blouse and sometimes as a cover-up for a current pregnancy.

Don’t get me wrong, my mom was a styling person, just not in her everyday life. As a young girl, I was a bit jealous of one friend’s mom who actually wore the pretty house dresses and crisply starched and ironed aprons. One day, I had the cheek to ask my mom why she didn’t dress like Patty’s mom. Patty’s mom always seemed to have it together. Mom’s answer didn’t really surprise me, “Patty’s mom only has one dirty kid to clean up after. I have seven.”

Ah, Mom, seven kids and that was the only time I heard you snap about us. Honestly, I don’t think I ever did enough to let my mom know how much I loved her and how I appreciated everything she did to keep the seven of us clean, well-fed and semi-polite in public and at the dinner table. The first time one of my kidlets gave me a handmade Mother’s Day card, I knew I didn’t have to be picture-perfect. The kid loved me just the way I was.

When my mom was putting in her final days, in 2008, my siblings and I spent many, many hours with her at the hospital. As I took my turn holding her hand, reading to her, singing her favourite songs and helping her with her meals (along with a few other things I never thought I’d EVER have to do for my mom), I thought about all of the unconditional love she gave her seven children. I thought about all of the meals she cooked. I remembered all of the laundry she ran through a wringer washer and all the clothes she hung on the line. I daydreamed about all the mending in the basket by the sofa and of all the weeding she did in her large vegetable garden. I smiled when I thought of all of the boo-boos she patched and kissed and about the library’s worth of bedtime stories read when she probably wanted to just sit with a cup of tea. I wondered how many nights my mom waited up for us when we tested the curfew—each of us thinking she was stressing about the late hour when she was really concerned about our safety.

One day isn’t enough for anyone who “moms.” One day is just a drop in the bucket. Honour the mom person in your life every day.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca