Cherish Your Mother’s Day

Mother’s Day 2016

 

I am feeling very sentimental this Mother’s Day. When my kids were young, Mother’s Day meant laying in bed pretending I was still asleep while secretly listening to the mayhem in the kitchen as my girls worked together with the help of their dad to make and serve me breakfast in bed.

 

This day was supposedly all about me, but the joy my daughters were feeling in spoiling me and honoring me made them happier than any in-bed dining experience I was having. Experiencing their joy, was my joy!

 

2016 is a milestone year for me. I am moving and downsizing. It makes good sense for many reasons, but I had not expected to be so emotional about closing this chapter of my life.   Of course, you are always a mom, but the role changes with time. Somehow this transition seems huge. This is the “launch” which ends in empty-nesting.

 

The arts and crafts shelves with glue guns, glitter, felt, feathers, paint, and scrapbooking materials will not be coming with me to the new place.   The old board games, the Halloween costume box – not coming. The boxes and boxes of archived kids art… I haven’t quit figured that one out yet.

 

So, while parenting has been a large and meaningful part of my life personally and professionally, the focus is shifting. My needs and future form my decisions now. And while I am excited for this next phase of life, I am grieving the end of the era that brought me so much joy.

 

I will enjoy my adult children. We are already planning a trip together this fall. But when my youngest said “You don’t need to get a bedroom just for me – I am launched, I won’t be living at home anymore”, I realized I had both succeeded in raising an independent mature adult, and was sad that it all went by so fast.

 

So fast? Funny, eh? I remember when my kids were little I would call my then husband and say “have you left work yet?” because I knew I needed to hand off these little charges. Now, I would kill for more time.   Isn’t that the irony of life?

 

This mother’s day is a memorable milestone. If you are getting a tray with a scribbled home made card, badly cooked eggs with cold toast, please – cherish it for me. You only get so many of them – don’t wish them away.