Belated Mother's Day Observations

Boy#4 delivering flowers, and Boy#2 skeptical about whatever his brother is saying. 

The beauty shot that goes with today's observations will seem confusing at first glance. Stick with me, though, because it is emblematic of what I want to say about Sunday's celebration of motherhood. (I know, I know. I'm three days late, which also is emblematic of my motherhood style which began when I was a geriatric 32 and has always been behind the curve.)

Anyway, I almost skipped writing about Mother's Day even though this blog is just pretty much a series of blatherings on that subject. But I will plant my stake on one truth about being a mother:

No one knows how to do it.

Really.

I was sure I had motherhood all figured out when I was in my teens/20s and not yet a mother. I would be firm but fair. I would be my children's mother, not their friend. I would never be too tired to listen. I would teach them how to make pie crusts and read to them at every opportunity.

I had confidence in confidence alone, but it only took a few hours of actual motherhood to realize that I was unfit for the position. Boy#1 had been born precipitously (preeclampsia is a real thing) and I had sunk into exhaustion after midnight when the door of my hospital room swung open and in rolled a nurse with a sub-five-pound baby in an incubator.

"Time for his late-night supper!" the nurse said cheerily. I just gaped at her.

Honestly, it never occurred to me that after having done a full and strenuous day of work I would not be allowed to sleep through the night.

And that, my friends, should be the motto of motherhood, embroidered on sofa pillows in every home: Honestly, It Never Occurred to Me.

It never occurred to me that being firm but fair was a standard too high, until the day I heard myself callously telling a kid "Fair is where you take your pigs." (I didn't originate that phrase, but oh boy, did I appropriate it.)  It didn't occur to me that there are a lot of times when being a friend looks like a lot more fun than being a mother. It didn't occur to me how bone-tired I'd be during year after year of not-sleeping-through-the-night-yet babies, too tired for late-night discussions. It didn't occur to me that I make a lousy pie crust, so why would anyone want to learn that?

The only mothering vow I made that I kept was that I read to the Boys at every opportunity.

Still? I love being a mother. I loved the babies, and their pat-pat hands on my cheek. I loved the toddlers, who are the only age group who can properly wear overalls. And the school-agers, and even the teens (oh, the teens! Those tantalizing glimpses of solidity!). Honestly? Motherhood is equal parts roller-coaster emotions, cliff-hanging decisions, and boring slog, and no one knows how to do it.

We're friends with a family who had four children just older than ours, and that mom? She had it all put together. Her kids were kind, smart, and well-mannered at just about the time ours were going through their untamed hellion stages. A friend asked Sharon how she had been such a good mom, and she just laughed.

"You do the best you can every day, forgive yourself, then get up the next day and do it again."

That became my motherhood mantra, and I thought back on it Sunday. We'd spend Saturday car shopping with Boy#4, and he arrived with a gorgeous arrangement of spring flowers from all of his siblings. Then Sunday night we had what has become our Mother's Day/Father's Day/birthday tradition--a raucous Google Chat with the Boys trash-talking over each other and showing off the dog's latest trick and generally behaving as if they were at home around the table instead of in four different states.

I'm the luckiest mother in the word. We didn't know how to do it, but somehow Husband and I have children who are kind, smart, well-mannered, and obviously like us and each other. That this could be the outcome of such a terrifyingly uncharted journey?

Honestly, it never occurred to me.