As a parent, I love my
children more than anything else in the world, and I want them to be safe,
strong, happy and healthy.
I want to be a good
mother. I love photos of mothers bathed in the warm, peaceful light of the golden
hour, sitting in a field of wildflowers, holding their children affectionately while wearing a pretty floral dress. She has patience in abundance and loves to spend
every possible moment caring for her children. That’s the kind of mother I
dream of being.
Sometimes being a
mother comes easily to me—like when the right thing to say leaves my mouth and
my kids’ faces brighten and I know I said exactly what they needed to hear. I
try and anticipate my children’s needs and meet them. I try to be patient and
kind, to listen and play with them as much as I cook and prepare for them. I
try and spend the time talking with them about the little things because as
someone has said, the little things are the big things to them, and I want them
to talk to me about the big things when they grow up.
As many as there are
good motherhood moments, sometimes being a “good mom” feels like an elusive
quality that I just can’t grasp. It floats away from me, and I’m left feeling
impatient, snappy and frustrated, and we’re all out of joint and nothing goes
the way it should. I feel like I’m a failure of a mother as often as I feel like
I’m a good mother. I observe other mothers out in public, I talk with friends
who are mothers, I am part of a family in which many are mothers. I read about
them, I see them on TV and watch them in movies—these other mothers—and I see
in them what I am not.
I often find myself
wishing I was more like “other mothers. “ “Other mothers” are more patient,
more kind. They have their tempers on a tight, strong leash while my temper’s
leash seems to be composed of threads that unravel a lot. They don’t care about
messes and embrace the adventures had in the midst of the chaos. They want
nothing more than to make memories with their kids. They look lovingly at their
child with the slightest air of displeasure when their kids spill an entire
glass of orange juice, and then wipe it up with one fell swoop of Bounty, and
they don’t chide the child to be more careful. They drop everything to answer
their kids’ questions, never telling them to “wait a few minutes, please; I
just need to finish sending a couple of important emails.” They have nothing to
feel guilty about.
I started realizing
that by idealizing all the good aspects of all the “good moms,” I was creating
an archetype of the perfect mother, and distancing myself from her all the while. I could barely see her, that ideal mother, because she was so high up on
a pedestal, her pretty shoes barely visible. I could barely see her, but I
desperately strived to be her.
But I have also
realized that every mother is not the same person. There are so many kinds of
people with so many different childhoods, different life experiences, different
personalities and different lives, different challenges, different strengths
and weaknesses, different values and motivations, different family dynamics. Then, many of them become mothers.
Just because they become mothers doesn’t mean they all left themselves behind
and transformed into the same person: “good moms.” Yes, parents routinely “die
to self” for the sake of their kids’ needs, but trust me, you’re still in
there, and the truth about who you are will come out and be even more apparent
when you have kids.
There are so many
kinds of mothers because there are so many kinds of people.
We’re all different
mothers, but it doesn’t mean there is only one combination of personality and
life experience that comprises a “good mom.”
Many people say that
their mom is the best mom in the world, but if you lined up all of those best
moms in the world, you would see a row of vastly different people. If every mom
is the best mom in the world, then no mom is the best mom in the world. This
isn’t a bad thing; it’s a good thing. It means that every mother is what her kids need; every mother is an
imperfect human with good days and bad days; every mother is trying to do what
is best for their kids; every mother expresses their love for their children in
different ways.
On this Mother’s Day,
I want to encourage all the mothers out there to just be the “you” kind of
mother. It’s what you were created to be, and every day, you are living out the
best kind of mother for your kids. God knew all this when He created you and created your children. Happy Mother’s Day, and much love to you!
