From the beginning of time there have been Moms.
Some Moms are better than other moms. For example, Tiger Sharks eat their young in utero… Yikes! Bet they don’t get a lot of Mother’s Day cards. On the opposite end of the spectrum, some fish keep their eggs in their mouth until the babies hatch in order to protect them, the ultimate in motherly behavior. Then there’s the cuckoo bird who tricks other birds into raising their young by laying their eggs in the nest of another bird. Foster care?
Just like the examples above, human moms aren’t perfect. We make mistakes. Sometimes it’s the result of mistakes passed down from our mothers, sometimes it’s just simply that we aren’t perfect. We’re human. We have flaws. But what is common to the vast majority of moms is an overwhelming love for our children, and a desire to see our children grow up healthy and happy.
The minute the first funny-looking, red-faced thing is put into our arms, our life changes from ‘me, me, me’ to ‘it’s all about the kids’. We nurse them, we feed them, we change their poopy diapers. We wipe their tears and bandage their booboos. We listen to them. We comfort them. We try to advise them. We cheer them on from the sidelines, we discipline them, we worry endlessly about them. Sometimes we just want to kill them yet, when all is said and done, our most important function is that we are a soft place for our kids to land. Because we love them. Mostly, we just love them.
And in the end, after all our hard work, our sleepless nights, our endless worry, they leave us to start their own lives. Which is what we wanted for them in the first place. Nevertheless, it kind of breaks our heart.
All this is why we celebrate Mother’s Day. It’s a single day out of 365 days when Moms get an acknowledgement of what we give to the world.
Frankly, what would the world do without moms?