Mother’s day approaches each May, and across the country
children of all ages turn their thoughts, count up their quarters, and put
crayon to construction paper all to honor that most important person in their
lives.
She is the one who kisses their bruised knees and constructs
dinosaur-shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their lunches. She is
the one cheering loudest at the soccer games before whipping out homemade all
natural frozen fruit pops for the team at half time. She supervises homework
and schedules play dates, music lessons and tutoring. She presides over arts
and crafts time, reading circles and thank you notes written on cut-out
tracings of their hands and feet for Grandma.
She is the one canning organic baby food, washing out cloth
diapers, reading up on gluten-free diets, scheduling doctor and dentist
appointments, finding new ways to bleach hockey equipment, sewing the preferred
purple sequins on gymnastics leotards, meeting with teachers for conferences,
constructing mini models of the universe for the science fair, selling candy
bars for new track warm ups, and more! Always, always, there is much more.
The sad truth is that our society demands so much of our mothers,
and parents in general, it is no surprise that so many find themselves doing
more than they ever imagined and still feeling like a failure at the end of the
day.
But as a daughter, mother, aunt, teacher and observer of
mothers in general, I’d like to suggest that there might be a better way for
all of us. Mothers are amazing, it’s true, and it seems like our society not
only puts them on a pedestal for all they do, it demands they build that
pedestal higher and higher. It demands they give the proverbial “one hundred
and ten percent,” for what could possibly be more important than the job of a
mother?
From my observations, however, motherhood best achieves its
true goal when it is not done
perfectly. You see, being “the perfect mother” is not really about being
perfect as a mother... it is about raising a healthy, well-adjusted and
independently capable child. And, in my opinion, this is best accomplished by
the “sort of okay” mother; the B+ mother; the not-so-perfect-all-too-human
variety our society seems determined to make feel like a failure.
This is the mother who values not only her child, but also
her sanity. This is the mother who teaches her child to overcome failure by
overcoming her own mistakes with grace and a sense of perspective. This is the
mother who allows her child to find his own sense of pride in a crooked project
he made himself; who allows her child to realize she plays soccer for the joy
of the game and her connection with her teammates, even if no one is there on
this particular day to cheer her on. For our children, we are the example of
balance in an increasingly demanding world, and by presenting them with a world
where everything is taken care of for them, we do them a great disservice.
So my intent on this Mother’s Day is not to add one more
level of stress to the overburdened mother who now might worry, Am I doing too much?? Rather, I hope we
can give to ourselves the permission to laugh a little and lower the
expectations that may not be doing anyone much good anyway.
When a mother can’t make her child’s T-ball game, she is
still doing the best for him. When she wakes up late because the alarm didn’t
go off and has to throw on some sweats and a baseball cap and rush the kids to
school with pop tarts and a cold chicken leg from last night, it’s a great
chance to teach them to smile, relax and do what you can do when life happens.
So to all the mothers out there doing laundry, cutting out
stegosaurus sandwich stencils, baking gluten-free brownies and managing a five
color coded calendar complete with fold out color key, know that you are doing
great things for your children. But know also that on the days when you have to
rinse out the football jersey in the sink and let it dry flapping out the
window on the way to practice, or send him to school with two bananas, a cold
pork chop and the left over chicken fried rice, or forget her oboe because you
packed the ballet shoes and left her school project sitting next to the door on
the back porch where it was left for the glue to dry faster, know that even on
these days you are doing great things for your children.
Mothers try to do what is best for their children, but doing
what is best for them often requires having the patience, trust and faith in
the universe to let them do for themselves. Mistakes will be made, knees will
get scraped, bugs, dirt, germs and other unknown substances will be ingested,
but success in life comes not from never falling down, but rather from learning
how to get up again.
published in the Mackinac Journal magazine for Mother's Day weekend, May 10.
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