Monday, May 14, 2012

Thoughts on Mothers

If a person is fortunate enough to have a good mother I think you must agree that her life is not easy.  From the minute you are born she worries about you; are you normal, are you sick (when you cry), do you have enough to eat, why aren’t you sleeping long enough.  These are all questions that go through her mind day after day until you learn to babble something or other.  It must be nerve wracking to say the least.  I remember babysitting for my sister once while she flew off to Hawaii.  My niece felt warm and I was in a panic lest she go into some type of shock.  I called my parents for advice, soaked her gently with a wet clothe and the following day smacked her for banging my head into the house thermostat because she was in a tantrum because I said no to her skating outside.  Didn’t she realize, I asked, that she had nearly died the night before and I wasn’t taking any chances with her playing outside when she had fever?  She said she wasn’t dying now so she should go skating.
      What do you do with a child like that?  Give her back to her mother, that’s what!
      But real mothers can’t do that.  They are stuck for a good 18 years with their child and the miracle is that they put up with us.  They put up with our crankiness, our vomit, our dirtiness, countless illnesses, demanding teachers, PMS, our broken teenage hearts, our hatred for tyrannical dads, our despair over our clothes, our figures, our hair, sibling rivalry and heaven only knows what else.  What do they get in return?  Pretty much nadda, zilch, ingratitude and an occasional remembrance on Mother’s Day.
      Well, that’s not really true.  While we may not appreciate our mothers very much while we are children, except when we are in the throes of truly hideous mumps, we recognize her worth almost immediately upon turning 18.  Suddenly we are emancipated from childhood and all we really want is for our mothers to take us back and pamper us with chicken soup and platitudes.
      Mothers really are the best human beings on the planet.

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