After school yesterday, I took the kids to Kroger to choose Mother’s Day cards. After six years, it’s still tough for me to read through cards and not pick out one for my own mother, so I’m glad they can read and choose for themselves. The compromise is a little tough when one is asking where the inappropriate cards are and the other is mesmerized by the pink glitter pop-up ones, but they moved on after being distracted by the toys and the discovery of POP TOOBS - those plastic accordion things you pull apart and they make a loud noise. I shared my memory of how they once came in McDonald’s Happy Meals and they preceded to discover that the faster you pull the louder it gets. So there they were whooping it up and acting like fools in the card isle while all the women were choosing sentiments for their moms. I suddenly felt really good about where I am in life. I soaked up their joy for a moment before I moved them onto the donut display because that’s what my mom would have done. Let them be kids.
Everyday I kiss them goodbye and watch them walk out the door with their backpacks. Everyday they are a little bigger, a little older, and have a tiny bit more life experience. Sometimes I pull them back in, hug them once more and put their faces in my hands just to take in their freckles and eyelashes. They are growing. This is exactly what I wanted to see. They are lovely humans with spunk and humor and personality. Sometime last week, I realized that I have moved from kissing boo-boos and hand holding to nurturing souls and comforting spirits. There is always the one mean kid who looks for someone else’s insecurities and goes after them, causing tears and crushing confidence. There are the girls who aren’t inclusive, hurting feelings and breaking hearts. There are the teams they won’t make, the goals they won’t score. There are the choices they will make and the consequences that may have to come. I know that the punk kid will grow up to be the obnoxious adult but it’s hard for an eleven year old to see that trajectory. Kroger donuts won’t always fix it but it won’t stop me from trying.
I hear my mother’s voice over and over as I mother my own children. She’s laughing when my girl comes downstairs in heels and a fairy dress to go swing because she thinks it will make her fly. She’s agreeing with me that it’s not fair because he tried really hard and wants it more than the other kids. She’s reminding me how many scraps of paper she used to pick up in my room when I’m picking confetti out of the carpet. She’s reminding me to let them figure it out, even though it’s hard to watch. She’s telling me that she knew they could do it when I doubted. I think how she didn’t put up with anybody’s mess, how she only needed to give us a look to make us straighten up, and how she beamed with pride at anything we accomplished. The things she taught me are engrained in my being and not only do I hear her, I am so much her.
Teaching was her career, but also her life. A friend of my mom’s gave me some of her school papers a while back. I sat and read through them - articles of her students that were recognized, her teacher evaluations, things she had written in her perfect cursive writing, and some of my report cards and grades interspersed. I stopped on the plastic covered report for “Teacher of the Year.” It was from 1993 and there was a picture of her on the front with big triangle hair wearing a lace collared puffy sleeve dress. The whole thing was typed by hand on a typewriter, no less. (The typewriter came out in my house when it was something important or “official.” There was a bottle of white-out really handy and she reminded me over and over how she nearly failed typing in high school as she pecked away at the keys, uttering a “shoot!” here and there.) There was no doubt hours of work in this, worthy of the report cover. It listed her accomplishments, her family life, and then there was a page and a half of her teaching philosophy which was founded on three basic principles - consistency, honesty, and love.
Some of my favorite things she said were, “We need to show children it’s not where you start, but where you finish that counts,” and “We need to follow through with what we promise.” By reading this I confirmed that a) her brilliance would never be overshadowed by her 90‘s hairdo and b) my brother and I had basically spent our entire childhood inside the walls of an elementary school classroom without knowing it. She figured if it worked at school, it would work at home or vice versa and she was probably too tired for another strategy.
Motherhood is not what anyone expects. I was so disappointed in the “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” book that I read to about the seventh month and donated it to Goodwill. I certainly did not expect that five years into this gig, I would figure out how to simultaneously survive and mother some toddlers.
What you can expect as a mother is to fall completely and hopelessly in love with small humans. You can expect to feel what they are feeling. You can expect to envision yourself walking out to collect him from the pitcher’s mound but you grip your fingers to the seat. You can expect find yourself mad over the money you spent on dance lessons until she puts on the costume and her whole being is transformed. You can expect to find joy in the first frogs of the season and eating tiny sandwiches on the floor at her tea party. You can expect to trial and error and second guess your way through eighteen years and hope that end the end you end up with an adult who loves God and loves people. You can expect to rise up and will yourself to live for the sake of their futures. You can expect that at the end of the day you will fall back on honesty, consistency, and love. And, when all else fails, you can expect that Kroger will have donuts.
Happy Mother’s Day!
kj
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