On yet another Mother's Day, I remember that:

 I was a girl child who loved to make clover rings, bake mud pies in the sunlight, stick my teddy behind a door with a corn pop in his rubber mouth waiting for him to magically eat it when I wasn't looking, stand in closets that I pretended were elevators that I occupied with Peter Pan and Tinker Bell (my favorite Disney character because she was sparkly and feisty), and had to trounce the neighbor boy who picked mercilessly on my red-headed, freckle faced brother who couldn't fight out of obedience to my Mother who hadn't told me the same thing.

I was a pre-teen who couldn't understand those strange sensations within me that I'd never experienced before, why I was noticing boys as something other than playmates for Chicken, Kick the Can, pool races or why girls started to notice weight, clothing, facial features and each others'; and loved sitting in the solitude of churches, reading Agatha Christie and Pearl Buck, dancing alone in my folks' dining room to an orchestra's arrangement of Moonlight Sonata. 

I was a teen who didn't know how to refuse home perms, wearing my Mom's college clothes to school, loved to sing, accepted my first tulip snipped from a tulip tree with a poem written to me, learned how to ring up and bag groceries, stopped charging 50c an hour to babysit, turned myself in to the principal for skipping Study Hall, hung out with the nerdy girls, drove my Mom's station wagon alone for the first time and then drove it right back home and never drove it again until a year after graduation, wondered why some kids in my classes could be cruel or terrifying, had my first brush with death, suffered through race riots and the loss of friends in Viet Nam, wanted to do something different with my life than what was normal for women back then.

I was a young woman living on her own for the first time, trying to make ends meet on $1.90 an hour, making tons of mistakes and experiencing first-hand what sexual harassment in the workplace and assault on dates meant back then before it was against the law or reported, dating someone I loved enough to follow anywhere in blind faith and then experiencing his rejection, becoming a young bride and finding out almost immediately who he really was behind closed doors and out of the view of others and not knowing what to do from there.

Before I was a mother, I was a person.  When I became a mother, I was still a person.  Now, as a Mother and a Grandmother, I am still a person who has lived and loved, struggled and succeeded, returned to loving solitude, sunlight, sparkle, mystery and still wouldn't be afraid to trounce a person beating up mercilessly on a child even if dressed again in a cute, little dress while wearing patent leather shoes.   

My best wishes today to all of the MIP family who are celebrating the experience of being a person who is also a Mother.  Happy Mother's Day! Maybe you want to share some of who you are underneath that Mom's crown/hat that you wear?

And for those of you who have not given birth to a human child, perhaps you've brought to life an idea that you have given flesh to and shared it with the world in some way?  There are many ways to be a Mother.  Who are you underneath that idea you gave birth to and have nurtured and cared for as your growing child?

-- Edited by grateful2be on Sunday 11th of May 2014 07:00:35 AM

-- Edited by grateful2be on Sunday 11th of May 2014 10:25:29 AM