to mom's everywhere, i high five-fist bump you!

When I started my journey of motherhood over sixteen years ago, I had no idea what I was doing. I had never changed a diaper, never been exposed to a baby crying for more than a few passing minutes, never thought about varying theories of childhood discipline. I'd never even taken Home Ec and had to carry one of those pretend babies around. The only thing I knew was that I wanted a baby...and now I had one...and I was totally in love...and totally committed to whatever lay ahead.

But in all my idea of not knowing how to mother, I never dreamed there would be so MANY ways I would have to mother.

Over the course of the next nine years, one baby soon turned to two, to three, to four; each with such different little personalities and needs. During those years, I was your typical super SAHM -- organizing play dates in the park, volunteer teaching the toddler music class at the library, homeschooling two gifted sons. I had a mini-van I could drive with one hand while retrieving a dropped binky with the other. I learned how to cook from watching Martha Stewart Living, longing to have my own backyard chickens and an unlimited budget to decorate my dream home.

Then, at year ten of my motherhood journey--about the time I was learning that mothering pre-teens was going to be different than mothering easy to entertain littles-- I got divorced and became a single mother. I hated referring to myself as that ("single mother") because it sounded as if I had never made the choice to marry, or had made the choice to divorce (neither of which were true), a term that often brought with it built-in sympathy or scorn, neither of which I wanted. But that's what the world chose to categorize me as for the next five years--like it or not.

During that time, I was the most driven, focused, and exhausted I had ever been. I went back to school and worked my hiney off to graduate with honors. I learned how to live on a shoestring budget and on rarely more than four hours of sleep. I worked five jobs while facing the health fallout that comes with my heart condition of mitral-valve stenosis. I had to learn to build a working, civil relationship with my ex-husband despite terribly hurt feelings, a lack of trust, and court-ordered money that wasn't always available. And all of this for my children. There was nothing I wouldn't have done for them, no matter of personal comfort I wouldn't have sacrificed for them. As their mother who loved them more than anything. As a mother who knew she had to make the best of what sometimes felt little better than survival. And though I often felt then that I was failing, I can look back now with dignity at what I did in those years.

Then, a year and a half ago, I became yet another kind of mother--a step-mother. I was blessed that my daughters-to-be were sweet as could be and accepted me immediately, but it didn't mean the transition was effortless.

In addition to my step-mothering, it also meant my boys were now being step-fathered, both relationships that take time, trust, love, laughter, and mutual respect to establish. It meant I now had to exist in some sort of civil, largely silent relationship with my husband's ex-wife who was/is nearly exclusively supported by his income, and who wasn't thrilled with the idea of me or my children, and all the duress and drama that regularly entails--which still means a lot of forgiving, attempts at understanding, deep breathing. 

Getting remarried didn't return me to my former glory as a SAHM, I still have to work to make sure our needs as a jumbo-sized family in pricey Southern California are met. But it did afford me full nights of sleep and an overflowing emotional bucket of happiness and love. And now, mothering children aged 16,14,13,10, 8 and 8,  I have learned that I will likely  never reach a point where I don't worry over my children, watch over them, cheer them, stand in amazement of them. There will never be one magical solution that worked on one that will work on all of them. That sometimes I will have to let them fail, that sometimes I will have to watch people who are supposed to care about them hurt them, and that sometimes I will give in simply because they outnumber me :)

Yesterday, I took a few hours and wrote each of my six children personalized letters about why I love being their mother. This, because the week before, I was at the gym on the elliptical machine and came across an article called "Ten Questions You Should Ask Your Mother." Having lost my own mother eight years ago now, I was glad I'd had the opportunity to ask her most of the questions on the list while she was still alive, holding the answers close to my heart. But when I reached the question What does your mother love most about you?, I lost it. I was glad I was already sweaty so the man next to me couldn't see that I was crying. My mom had often told me things she loved about me, but I didn't always listen. Maybe I didn't believe her. Maybe I assumed she would always be around to keep telling me. Maybe, like my own children, I could never have pictured a life without her.

For any and all of those reasons,  I wanted my children to know, without a doubt, how much I love them, the reasons I love them, that I will always love them, and that I have always tried to do the best for them with what I had emotionally, financially, and in wisdom available to me at any time. I know there is so much I could have done better, that I could do better, that I will do better, but I set out on this journey committed, and as I have crossed one threshold of mothering after another, I have never flinched.

To all you mothers, at whatever stage or type of mothering you're in, I high five you and wish you a Happy Mother's Day!