Mothers Rule

While I dangled my feet in the pool, Aiden came and set this leaf in the water for me. 

I've never had a perfect Mother's Day. In past years there have been some real doozies, to tell you the truth. But still, I love Mother's Day. Mothers rule the world. Mothers are the most influential, powerful figures in the world, never mind governments or Fortune 500 Companies. The future lies in the strength of mothers. I am grateful for my own mother, a Saint, really, and for all of the mothers that have come before her to bring me to this point in the history of the world. As a mother. 

A Mother's Tree sampler cross-stitched by my mother, waiting for me to frame it

Every year I look forward to Mother's Day. I've read about women who hate the holiday, but I don't care. I love it, even though it never resembles the Hallmark holiday it's accused of being. I love the handmade card that will inevitably come home from my 1st grader. 

I love that I can always count on Aiden to set his alarm and get up early to bring me breakfast in bed. I love that with breakfast, is always a vase of tulips, which he had Lyndsay drive him to the store to buy, late at night after I'd gone to bed.

But, it's not perfect. After I ate my breakfast in bed, I still had to get up and make pancakes for everyone else. And I still had to tell the boys to stop fighting a million times because for Pete's sake, it's Sunday, and Mother's Day! The cat still barfed up a hairball on the newly shampooed carpet, and it was 102 degrees outside. (Two things I hate.) I am still a single mom, delicately balancing this new separation, and I am still worried about bills I don't have the money to pay.

But today, I got to lead the Primary children in singing "Mother, I Love You" and "My Mother Dear" during Sacrament meeting, and they sang so well. And the talks were not about perfect examples of motherhood, but of the expectations of men to support the women and mothers in their lives. And today? Today Dylan called me, and he sounded happy. And he told me he loved me. And even though I made dinner tonight, Lyndsay and Aiden didn't balk when I told them they were cleaning up afterwards.

Taken singly, these events of the day seem insignificant, though possibly quaint. But that's how it is with mothering. Day in and day out, a whole routine of minutiae, mundane, do-it-to-have-it-undone sort of tasks. And yet, enough of those days go by and you look at the people who now populate your home (or their own), and your life, and this world, and you stand all amazed that you had something to do with that, whether you birthed them or not. Because the work of mothering is how the real evolution of this world is occurring.

And you tell me that's not powerful.