Happy Mother’s Day
To all the moms out there with permanent marker and twice reheated coffee decorating their tables. Juxtaposed with back yard flowers picked by the same little hands that tumble old coins dug up at the beach, make crystal hedgehog science experiments, and dino teeth out of plaster.
Motherhood is hard and fun, messy and wonderful, exciting and repetitive, lonely and cooperative, fulfilling and thankless. It’s the highs of hearing child learn to read in your lap and the lows of holding a broken-hearted young man when he’s been hurt.
It’s more challenging than running into a burning building, more rewarding than earning a degree, and more enduring than the single day a year that we celebrate it.
So many women, mother’s and not, have influenced the way I raise my boys. So many women have mothered me and my boys alike. I have loved many children who were not my own, as a bonus mother.
This next phase of the world will call us all to mother many who need it. It will be messy, scary, and hard, and there will be lows, but it will also be rewarding, exciting, and worth it.
Love to all of you who mother your children, your students, your nieces and nephews, your grandchildren, your neighbors, your community, and your world.
YOU are essential, the most essential person in the world.
By Kitty Michelotti