Mothering, a matter of the heart.
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I’ll admit, sometimes I get a little irked. Please hear me out to the end though, and hear me with you heart.
I see that “Nurses Appreciation Week” is coming up, as well as “Teachers Appreciation Week” and I know there is a celebration of Administrative Assistants that may be stretched a week as well, and then there is Mother’s Day.
Before you get out the pitch forks, know that as a homeschooling Momma, I love, LOVE public school teachers. I am in awe how you get through an art project with 24 little people. I know how you love each and every one of those kids and give them your very best.
My Mother is a nurse and I know first hand the hours on their feet, the uneaten lunches, and the full bladders. You hold hands and comfort with super human will and them go home and cry yourself to sleep.
It’s just that, I am, “only a Mom”. I get just one day to celebrate. At first it seemed a little unfair. Fortunately I am a fairly rational person so I turn to reason. Logically some teachers would need a week to have a turn with all of their students and nurses are much the same, touching so many different patients. Spreading out the period of appreciation makes a lot of sense, but this did not make me feel any better.
Then I thought about the things I love most about Mothering. They are not the big things.
They are the weak cup of coffee, with way too much creamer; brought slopping over, by a first time coffee maker, beaming with pride.
Chubby fingers, yellow with dandelion’s pollen bringing me flower after flower.
There is the warm little hand that slips into mine as my daughter learns to read, the squeeze that follows because she is so excited to be doing it “for real”.
It is the “for real” that gets me. The moments when I am Mothering. Those are real. Those are my every day gifts.
My students will not pass to the next grade and leave me behind, nor will my patients. They will always return for another band aid, and I hope they will call me to ask how to soothe a little grandchild one day.
I am a mother and will be forever.
I would love a week of attention and flowers, but the reality is not one of us is working for that. We all do what we do because we love it. Teachers, everyday teach; some in crummy schools for little more than gas money, because they love children. They are addicted to the “aha” moment, pouring in as much knowledge as they can in a school year. Nurses put their lives in danger regularly, and in return small children cry at the sight of them; for giving them shots that make them feel better.
The things that make our jobs crummy will always be there, but a day to reflect on all the things that make Mothering awesome is just what I needed.
That moment, I see when I close my eyes, that overwhelms me with love for my place in this world, that is Mother’s Day in my heart.
What is your mothering moment?
