Parenting Without A License

Some Things Are Worth Waiting For

Posted by Kimberly on May 12th, 2008 — Posted in The Ladies, Diva Girl, Zen Baby, Kipple

Mother’s Day really isn’t a big deal to me. I of course make sure to honour my own mother with a specially chosen mushy card and token of my affection, appreciation, respect, but for myself the day is a bit of a wash. Solo moms are rarely gifted with tiny velvet boxes and our kisses tend to begin with the kids, not Kay, so the anticipation factor tends to be fairly low–limited to whatever teacher generated craft has come home this year.

Not that the crafts aren’t lovely, wonderful, meaningful, blah blah blah…But really….It’s not like the kid thought this stuff up on her own. And after the “Mom&Me Cookies” debacle back in the first grade, when I was presented with a jar of dry ingredients, a recipe, and an overexcited six year old who spent the entire day nagging me to essentially make my own damn gift, I’ve kinda been soured on the whole teacher-driven maternal appreciation thing.

So, since it seems somehow tacky to encourage the children to remember to tell me how much I rock, I pretty much just let Mother’s Day go except for using it as an excuse to buy myself something pretty. It’s not like I really need the cards and flowers to know that I’m a great mom and they love me, and really, if I have to ask for them, I don’t want them at all. Needless to say, my expectations for this year were, as always, fairly low. I was planning on calling it a red letter day if I got to sleep past 8.

Motherhood is nothing if not surprising, however. And sometimes, even when they make you cry, they are even good surprises.

You know, little velvet boxes are nice (I got one of those too–also Sabrina’s idea), but they really can’t hold a candle to the genuine love that shines through a poem that contains a line thanking you for letting the kid play in your room. I never really realized just how much I’ve missed getting a Mother’s Day card all these years until I held that painstakingly created cardboard butterfly in my hands on Sunday morning. But that’s ok, because those two poems, a decade in the making, were totally worth the wait.