Mothers Day.....Ack......

I've been a mother for 16 years now. I've read all of the trite and sentimental mush that gets circulated at mothers day. It is easy for me to continue in my disdain for overrated holidays, because my two boys make it easy.

The cooey emails about the toughness, gentleness, stalwartness....and other "nesses" of motherhood are all true. But reading them does not validate my parenting. Nor does it assure that just because I am a Mother, that I am any good at it.

So, this year, someone sent me a Mother's Day piece written by Anna Quindlan, one of my favorite writers. She is an author but is best known for her essays twice a month on the last page of Newsweek. Ms Quindlan bring intelligence to every topic she touches, knowledge and a cutting edge to everything she writes.

She did not cover new ground with this piece. In fact, it was much of the same old same old that has gone around before. A reminder to live now, in the moment, with one's children....because they will soon be gone. She just says it in a way that I can hear.

I thought about that. Almost every morning, I head to work 45 minutes early (when I could be sleeping in...which I love to do), just so that I can drop my 16 year old son off at choir and get to say "love ya" in that flippant way that a teenage boy can hear, but that conveys the depths of my love. My son has never said "love ya, too".....instead he says "have a good day". Often twice. There is deep abiding love that is transmitted in those 15 seconds that I would not trade for anything.

Our 13 year old son is a bit more pliable when it comes to daily loving expressions. He won't say the love words either.....I'm way over needing that.........but he lets me say them to him. He waits for me to say them to him. And he nods in my direction.

Daily. Everyday. My children hear that they are loved every single day of their lives. Sometimes twice. Sometimes I'm the only one who hears me say it, but I say it anyway. Why? Because I do love them. But more importantly, I know that a child's understanding of the Divine is often seated in their parental interaction. I want them to instinctively know that God loves them every day, all day, so that when it comes time to question their faith, the bible, God's existence, living moral lives, loving neighbor and enemy, that they have a foundation of knowing what it is like to be loved, simply because they exist in this world.

Simply because they exist.

They are loved.

By me.

Their Mom.

asgr