Memoirs from a Mother

To say you don't know what unconditional love is until you become a mother is an understatement. Becoming a mother is one of the most trying yet fulfilling roles you could possibly play. When you first have your children you can't possibly know what lies ahead. You start out thinking you will just play and coo and put them to sleep and they will sleep for at least 8 hours straight every night. Then, you may have subsequent children and think that they will follow suit and they will all play nicely together. You quickly realize that sibling rivalry is for real and being a referee is what your new role has become.

Somehow when you are going through it, you never think there will be an end to the endless tasks of parenting. You think that the nose and butt you wiped will need to be wiped for the next 400 years. But as often happens in life, you do get older and so do your children. The days that you couldn't wait to end, do, and you are left deciding which color to paint the room your son or daughter moved out of. The days of countless loads of laundry and needing at least one whole day to do it all are replaced by once a week, regular size loads that we can do in one hour. All the trips to the supermarket and all the times we tell them that money doesn't grow on trees we wish we could have again. We do so much rushing through life and wish our children would just hurry up and get out of the stages that they are in. All of this rushing turns into a sea of memories that most of us mommies would never trade.

I roll my eyes as my son shaves his beard differently for the third time this month and as he asks me, once again, if it is even. My initial instinct was to keep rolling my eyes and tell him to just get over himself. This morning, though, I rethink that and remember that like the toys all over the house and the complaining about the mess and the work they caused me growing up, this too shall pass and I will wish I could have him asking me my opinion once more. No words were ever written to describe this type of love that even as I write this, my eyes start to swell with pride and joy. Our children will never know how much they mean to us until perhaps, just maybe, they have their own little/big ones to fall in love with.