Mothers Day May 15, 2007
I never really cared much for Mothers Day. My mum always said that we have 364 other days in the year to show that we love her. We didn’t need to wait until the second Sunday of May to do it. And, in fact, she’d rather we didn’t. That seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Besides, my mum hates chrysanthemums.
Now that I’ve had 4 Mothers Days as a mother myself I’m starting to see it in a new light. It’s not that I get spoiled. I’m pretty spoiled for the rest of the year anyway. And in years to come I’m sure I’ll get very sick of the dodgy childcare/kinder/school made presents that I’ll be required to accept with rapture.
Mothers Day, for me, is an opportunity to think about why I chose to be a mum. I wasn’t always going to do this. For a very long time I was never, ever going to have children. Then, 5 or 6 years ago, I (with Mark) made an explicit choice to become a parent. I didn’t have to. Neither of my pregnancies were unplanned or unwanted. I had a range of options I could have explored. I chose this.
This is what I remember when I don’t want to get out of bed in the middle of the night or early in the morning. It’s what I tell myself when I resent having to wipe a bottom or clean up another ‘accident’. This is the life I chose. And - good, bad or indifferent - it is what I make it.
I can’t articulate why I made this choice. We tell people that we decided that we would be more likely to regret not having children, than to regret having them. But I’m not sure I can explain why that would be. One thing I do know, though, is that I wouldn’t change my lot for the world.
Call me selfish - you wouldn’t be the first or last - but I wouldn’t want to miss a minute of Finn’s and Leila’s lives. I want to be a part of the adventure that they are on. And I’m so very glad that I am.
you are especially lovely.