A Tribute to Mother

The awesome depths of a mother’s love, care, and devotion for her children are rarely fully understood by those children. When we are growing up, we take her labor of love for granted half the time, and the other half we believe she is the meanest lady in the world because she wants to make absolutely certain that we do not experience anything fun during our natural lifespan. Then we grow up and begin having to do for ourselves the things she always did for us, and we begin to get a glimpse of just how wonderful a woman she is. Then, perchance, we have children of our own and experience an even richer epiphany of just how great a person a mother is.
Mother never gets the praise she deserves, and just one day out of the year is really a shameful pittance to offer her in comparison to the decades of debt we owe her. Do just a fraction of her work for only a small percentage of the time she did it, asking no financial compensation in return, and see if the second Sunday in May is sufficient thanks. Come with me on a brief tour which, honestly, can do no justice to the job description of “Mother”.
She changed our diapers multiple times a day for several years and then put up with the ordeal of potty-training so she would not have to do it for many more. She made our toast or waffles or oatmeal in the morning; then she made us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch; then after that she slaved in the kitchen for hours to get our supper ready (knowing we wouldn’t eat half of it because we were too picky). And on top of that she was generous enough to give us snacks and special treats – and more than sometimes, it would be a delicious homemade one like pie or cake or cookies.
Mom was an accountant, and a purchasing manager, and an organizer, and a janitor, and a chauffeur. She made sure we were always well-stocked with plenty of food and clothes and shoes and even toys. She put all of our things in a decent order every day, when if it were up to us, they would lay scattered hither and yon, with no rhyme or reason as to their whereabouts. When we made a mess of our rooms or left dirt on the floor or spilled a soda or some fruit juice, she made sure there was no evidence left behind that it ever happened – though we should have been sentenced to do it ourselves, even if it took longer than five minutes to do it. Mom put thousands and thousands of miles on the family car over the years just so we could get to school, or a friend’s house, or the park, or to some other fun place we wanted to go (even when Mom would have liked to stay home and take a nap).
Mom was also a security guard. We never left her sight for very long, and even then we were never out of her mind. She made sure she knew where we were and what we were doing at all times. And if she heard the slightest peep out of us, she would come running to see what was the matter – and if anything was the matter, she quickly became the best nurse in the world.
The things we thought were torture were really the kindest things she could do for us. When she sternly scolded us for stealing our sibling’s toy or leaving our room in a mess or not saying “please” and “thank you” or skipping our homework in favor of the ballgame or eating too many M&M’s, what she was really doing was making sure we didn’t turn out to be selfish, rude, inconsiderate, uneducated, unhealthy dirtballs. If she ever needed to, Mom would occasionally take us aside and have a long talk with us, teaching us things we may not have wanted to hear but which were for our own long-term good. We may have heard those lectures over and over again, but it turned out it was so that we would never forget them – and we haven’t.
Mom did all of this and more – and she never once got a break because we never once stopped breathing and living and doing. She never got one dollar in exchange for her work, moreover, even though a fair accounting of her just reward would make the richest CEO in America turn bright green with jealousy.
Three hundred and sixty-five days a year (plus one for leap years), seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, Mom was on call for us. Today we stop – just for a little while – think about what that really means, and say thank you. It turns out there never really was, is, or will be any person on the planet quite like Mom. And so – thank you, Mother, from the bottom of our hearts. We love you.