Yesterday was one of those days where you wake up and you just know it’s going to be a bad one – one of those days you wish you could just skip before it even starts. It began too early with a dog needing to go pee. Now, that’s not too bad, better the dog ask to go outside than you wake up and immediately step in a puddle of luke warm pee that you have to clean up. At that point the day was still salvageable.
So, I got up, I let the dogs out, I made myself some tea, I wrote a blog post, and then I looked at my schedule for the day. That’s when things went wrong. I work Mondays (and sometimes other days of the week), so Tuesday tends to be my errand/appointment day. I had a couple of appointments scheduled for myself, but the twist comes here: my parents are out of town and Tuesday also happens to be the day when my mom has several standing errands that she does. So I was sitting there, looking at my schedule, factoring the time it would take to get between all these errands, and then thinking about the time I’d need to spend working one of my stay-at-home jobs, and I realized that there was no room – no time – in all of Tuesday for me to write my book. And that’s when the bad mood hit.
I’m almost done with the current draft of my book. I have exactly five chapters left to write, which I can conceivably write in one week. All I really want to do is focus on writing, so that I can get it done, so that I can start editing, but no, yesterday, I had to be myself and my mother and just as I was starting to get really pissy and mad about that, I realized: “This is what Mom’s everyday looks like.”
I like to think of myself as a mature and responsible young adult. For the most part I am, but when I realized that I was angry about having to do what every full-time parent has to do on a daily basis, it was like being hit on the head with a hammer: I’m kind of a spoiled brat. I’m not as grown up and responsible as I like to think I am, and I’m not sure that I’m ready to do all the things that my mom does to keep the house running smoothly. Sure, I’ll do them if I need to do them, but at this point in my life if I had to do what my mother does everyday I’d turn into a bitter, resentful bitch with a short temper and a sharp tongue.
This post is for you mom, to thank you for everything you do – for all the little things that we don’t even realize you’re doing. Thank you so much for all the personal time and all the energy you’ve sacrificed over the past twenty-two years to make sure that we have food to eat and clothes to wear. Thank you for all the driving back and forth and back and forth you’ve done to get us to and from sports practices and play rehearsals and choir concerts. I’m sorry for all the times I’ve bitched at you for being a little late. I’m sorry for all the times I’ve been ungrateful and for all the times I’ve taken you for granted. I’m sorry if there are times when I make your life more difficult than it needs to be – I’ll try to be better. I want you to know that I appreciate you so much more than words can express. You really are the best mom ever and I have no idea how I’ll ever manage to repay you for everything you’ve done. So thank you so much.
And thank you, everyone, for reading.
To add, your mother always carries on with a positive attitude and an innate sense of joy. And, Emily, as far as “paying back”, you can’t. But this article is one of the many gifts we receive from our sons and daughters, and we cherish them. Hope you get a chance to write today. Thanks for sharing. K