Mother’s Day

I was spoiled this Mother’s Day.  Mr. Husband gave me a gift certificate to my favourite shop in Port Carling, took us all out for breakfast so I didn’t have to cook or do dishes and then took my mother, the Gaffer and I out for dinner so we could celebrate Grandma’s Mother’s Day as well.  I love all the pampering so please don’t tell Mr. Husband this next tidbit, but frankly, I am so elated to be included in the special group that gets honoured this time every year that the gifts and treats are just gravy.

My whole life, the only thing I knew for certain, aside from the fact that Darryl Sittler and Lanny MacDonald were the greatest hockey players of all time, was that I was going to be a mom. Until I was 30, it didn’t even occur to me to put in terms of "want to be a mom." I just knew I would be. I remember sitting in Mr. Hoch’s class in Grade 13 religion (are there any St. Joe’s Morrow Park girls out there?) filling out chart after chart and writing paragraph after paragraph about the future. Where would I be at 20? 30? 40? What was most important to me? Career? Family? Financial Status? What role did God and prayer play in my quest? While many of my friends were plotting their rise in the banking world and charting courses for their as of yet unnamed careers, I was day-dreaming of the super human colossal sized pitcher of Kool-Aid hanging out in my backyard, quenching the thirst of all the little critters who were playing on my jungle gym and giggling with delight. I was wearing a flowery little apron and doling out home made chocolate chip cookies, from my mom’s world famous recipe. I knew I would probably have to find a job to tide me over until I actually got married and started birthing all these babies in a neighbourhood replete with like-minded women, but I never had ambitions of a career other than motherhood.

That made 30 a really hard year for me. There I was, childless, with a fairly solid career in education, including a few promotions, under my belt.  Somehow or other, most of my professionally driven girlfirends were at home baking cookies and burping babies and I had inadvertently cut out a career for myself.  As the new millinium approached with the announcement of my 35th year, my grief at missing out on the only thing I had ever really wanted out of life was palatable.

But then Mr. Husband showed up with three of the greatest instant gifts any wanna-be mom could hope for and I had recipients for all my pent-up nurturing. I love those three kids as fiercely as I love my own, and I can say this now because I was blessed to finally have one of my own, but they are not mine.  They have a mother and father who love them fiercely. I did not help bring them into the world, raise them from infancy and document their first giggle, loose tooth and baby grunts. The homemade crayoned card that leaned against the red rose that poked out of a vase in our kitchen on my first Mother’s Day as a step-mom was one of the greatest gifts I’d ever received, but still I wanted a title role in Mother’s Day.

The Gaffer was hard work. She required two and half years and some surgical intervention during SARS to be conceived and then emergency surgery and three months of neo-natal care to be brought into the world. But she has made me a mother and that is what I celebrate each May. The absolute treasure of being a card carrying member of the most precious club there is. Of course, it’s easy for me to say all that right now. She’s three. 99% of her day is spent making me giggle, smile and want to cuddle her. I’ll need someone to send this blog back to me when she is an adolescent and 99% of her day is spent trying my patience. But even if 364 days of the year I grouse about her, on the second Sunday in May, I will always honor the privelege she brought to me by allowing me to be honoured with all of you.