Maybe you’re like me and you have lots of things people call you, mommy, hey you, lady with all those kids… but what really makes a mother sweet? Simply the love she has for her children and the time she spends loving them amplifies her sweetness.
Now that my kids are all older (the quads will be 17 years old next month!) I have been able to look back with fondness, and more than a little … shall we call it regret? I suspect if you’re like me you would do the same.
There have been so many things I wish I have done better, been more consistent in disciplining and teaching my kids chores, more consistent in taking pictures of them growing up, and just plain more of a better mom.
But, who is to say I was not enough? They would be wrong. I hope you would realize that looking back on your life too. We are enough. We try our best, even if our best seems like it is not good enough from time to time. We just keep trying. Because they are our kids and somehow that makes them special. Just because they are ours.
We love our kids into and through being teenagers even though, well, they are teenagers. Transitioning from being a child to being a responsible adult means testing the limits and challenging the rules that were so respectfully and kindly followed just a few years earlier. We worry, we cry, and sometimes we yell. But we always love and care for them. Regardless of how ‘teenager’ they behave. Because they are ours.
And they love us back, because we are theirs. Often we forget or they certainly don’t want us to believe they still love us as they are embarking out to be all grown up. Sometimes though, if we listen to the litter patter of the past and tune into their hearts we can still hear it having a piece of us within.
And sometimes, if we allow them to make their own choices and have their own opinions, they will tell us.
Some of the things I have heard from my teenagers lately go like this:
“Yeah, Mom. My friends asked me why you hate me.”
“What? Why would they think I hate you? Do you think I do?”
“No. They just don’t see a reason for the rules. You know, like the 24 hour notice for something on the schedule and needing know where I am all the time. I know you love me.”
And then there was this other conversation that went like this:
Me to my son, “What do you think?”
“Well, I’m frustrated. But it doesn’t last very long because I go think about what you tell me and why and then I know you are right. So then I’m not as frustrated anymore.”
And my favorite from this last week:
Me to him with that regrettable impatience we talked about earlier: “Why were you on your phone and not coming to get in the car?”
“Oh, because I was talking with a friend about you and how you were looking for me earlier.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I was telling him you were just trying to bring me a snack. He says you’re the best mom. He’s right! You are the best, Mom. Thanks.”
So after all this time, as the kids approach their birthday with only one year left until I don’t get to say “because I’m the mom” or use the excuse of “you’re not 18 yet’ there is some proof that I have done a good enough job. Good enough even in the eyes of my kids. Not all of them express it verbally, but I choose to believe they all feel similar in their hearts. I am good enough.
I’m sure you are, too.
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