I’m going to be as honest as I can be. I intended to write this on Friday, and then on Saturday, and then again on Sunday (Mother’s Day). Busy is one word to describe what I have been lately, with my surgery and the physical therapy, icing, passive range of motion machine and other items. The reality is that I type these up on my laptop, which I plugged in upstairs immediately upon returning from surgery, and simply haven’t taken the effort to put it in a backpack to take down with me to use while laying there in the machine or icing my hip.
To be fair, the mothers in my life are the majority of the reasons I’ve ever been late. So delaying this release until after Mother’s Day may be appropriate. From my own mother either forgetting completely about a practice or trying to wrangle a small army to get me there, to my own wife who seems to think of time as at best a relative factor to be ignored, and perhaps a completely irrelevant metric on which to operate, time seems to be something most of the mom’s in my life are at best indifferent towards.
Enough fussing. I have had 4 women play a role of mother in my life, and this is a thank you.
Mom
You loved me through some difficult times, actually watching me choose to live with dad rather than you after the divorce, and watching my own struggle with pride and anger from a distance. You continued to pray unceasingly for me and in spite of my best efforts, continued to love me when I was being ugly. You deserved so much better than to be treated the way I treated you for so long. I hope you are proud of the man I have become. I hope you are happy with the way I am a husband, a father, and a son. If you are not, I will, of course, listen intently several weeks to months after trying to convince you that you should be.
Step-Mom
You chose to marry into a mess. Whatever you were thinking, we tried to make it impossible for you to succeed. You cared for me when I struggled at the idea of an outsider. As my siblings and I entered our “gracious” and “responsible” teenage years and turned whatever romance you thought you might have into some version of Mad Max or Escape from LA, you still kept trying. Your efforts have not gone unnoticed and my memories from then have been cherished because of it.
Mother-In-Law
You have embraced me into your family from the beginning and whether hosting our growing family, or visiting, you have always let me know how happy you are to have me as a son-in-law and how good we are doing with the kids. I cannot tell you how much it means to me to have someone who played no part in raising me telling me that I have done well and sharing your pride in what we have done so far. Seeing you happy with where your daughter is and how your grandchildren are doing warms my heart. Most of all, you gave birth to and raised my wife, who continues to challenge whatever remaining pride I had as a young man, but completes me.
Wife
The most important mother in my life. You do complete me. You met me at a time in my life when I had accomplished something big and thought I could single-handedly take on the world. If I had not been so confident at the time, I seriously doubt I would have had the courage to ask you to marry me. Since then, we have journeyed through several trials of learning and growing, including your giving birth to our 3 children. You have watched me go from successful and confident, as well as stupid and inexperienced, to a much wiser and experienced man with confidence wavering and fearful of the future. Through all of this, you have continued to slowly turn my sterile house into a loving home. You have done the vast bulk of the work to get our children through some of the most tenuous moments of their lives so far. I know we can get through anything as long as we continue to hold hands and try.
To all the mothers in my life, even those who have never been mothers to me, but sisters, grandmothers, aunts, cousins, and even friends, I hope you were appreciated yesterday for what you did for your kids. If not, it may not mean much, but I tip my hat.
Without you, none of us would have reached adulthood. Once there, though, we don’t need our mothers anymore. In fact, it is even cooler than that. Once we’re adults, we want our mothers.
Love Always and God Bless,
Men
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