For Those Who Have Given Themselves Away

I always see pictures on my social media on Mother’s Day that always make me wonder about those people’s lives a little bit. I understand that people always want nice pictures on Mother’s Day and that on celebratory days we like to put our best selves forward, not just because that’s who we want people to think we are, but also because that’s how we want to remember ourselves.

But frankly, between the frantic squirming in church and the excitement for cookies afterwards and the pre-nap exhaustion afterwards because bedtimes have been terrible, we didn’t have a lot of Hallmark moments.

This is how my Mother’s Day went: in the morning, my boys came in, all excited, eyes bright, jumping up and down in their glee, to explain to me about how they had just spent the last 20 minutes throwing sidewalk chalk at their aunt’s brand new car. “Mom! Sometimes the chalk breaks on the car! And some times it makes a mark like a rainbow! And once I threw it so high it went ALL THE WAY OVER the car!! But usually it just hits the windows and the sides, Mom!”

Also, because of our terrible bedtimes and lack of sleep lately, Eliot spends much of the days in dreadful despair. His laid-back, easy going nature cannot withstand no sleep and teeth coming in. (Who could, really. I’d look about like this too if I had his life.)

Then, in the afternoon, I walked into the TV room to see that they had dumped out their milk into a giant puddle on the wood floor, and were starting to draw shapes out of it. (Points for artistic qualities?)

That was Mother’s Day here.

I read a study once about parents, that said that the immediate aftermath of parenthood makes new parents more depressed and more unsatisfied with their lives. Going from only having to worry about yourself to having to make sure tiny people are bathed and fed and happy is a rough shock for sure.

Well, we’re still in the immediate aftermath. And we didn’t really get into parenting for the dirty diapers at 3am or the car seat switching that takes exactly thirty one minutes per car seat. We don’t love breaking up sibling fights twenty times a day that much. And they just aren’t that adorable when we are walking and they want to ride in the stroller, no they want to walk, no they want to ride, NO, WALK RIGHT NOW, MOM.

I mean, if someone had told me before I had kids that I would spend a grand total of four years averaging two wake ups a night I might have been made to make some different decisions. (Just kidding. But really.)

Most days, for me, it seems like there are so few ‘happy right now’ moments in parenting young children. There are some. But I think maybe most of us got into the parenting game for the future, not for the present, and if there’s anything in the world that waits this long for fulfillment, I don’t know what it is.

But there’s hope because the study goes on to say that as time goes by, something strange happens. Once adults hit age 50 or so, it’s the parents that have the happiness edge. And I think it’s because that’s exactly what parenting is: a preparation for the future, an investment in the future.

It is, at its core, a realization that we don’t last forever. It is investing in something that will outlive you. It is finding happiness in giving your heart, your resources, and a good portion of your life away.

In the end, mothering comes down to what people have told us all throughout the generations: that love is not love unless you give it away. That if you grasp onto the things you have and keep them for yourself, often they end up withering in your hands. That if we find ourselves with more than we need, the secret is to lay a bigger table, not build a bigger barn. That often our lives, and our true selves, are really made real when we live them for other people.

Of course, there are many ways to do all these things. There is teaching, there is choosing to support family members, there is long term mentoring, there is foster care, hospice care, and so many others.

So if there’s anything to celebrate on Mother’s Day it should be this: that there are women, who throughout generations, have chosen to live for others, to open up their hands and give away what they have, whether that be time, money, emotional energy, or sanity.

And really, none of us would be here today if they hadn’t.