Doing Our Best

We celebrated Mother's Day yesterday.

Tom and the girls was kind enough to let me sleep in before I got up to make breakfast for us all. Which…what a typical Sunday.

Then I folded laundry while Alyssa watched the original Plant of the Apes. She’s a cool kid, that one. During the scene in which Charlton Heston’s nude butt is shown she asked quite seriously, “Who wants to see that? Why?”

Like I said, she’s one awesome kid.

Then we headed to my mom’s, where she’d made brunch for everyone. Yes, the women in our family don’t quite let everyone do for them even on Mother’s Day. Why would we?

I let A and O pick out gifts for my mom and then we also framed their spring pictures. I put the pictures in the gift bags with the gifts they’d picked out so my mom would know which was from whom. Clever, huh?

As the visit rolled to a close, my mom thanked me and my brothers for coming over. She said that the best gift any of us gave her was just being there, visiting, spending time with her.

I hugged my mom and thanked her for being amazing. Because she is. She’s amazing. She was a single working mother most of my life. She worked so hard and yet we all knew how much she loved us.

I told her that anything I do right as I navigate this mommy journey is because I learned from her. Anything I do wrong is all on me. She laughed, hugged me again and told me that she thinks I’m darned good at this mom thing.

Coming from her, I’m absolutely taking it as a compliment. She always let me and my brothers know, through words and through actions, that we were the most important things in her world. She’s expanded that to include my girls and my nephew. Those kids are so at home at her house that they don’t even think twice about asking for food, taking out toys to play with, changing the channel on the television.

We got the luck of the draw when we got her. I only pray that I show and tell my girls how important they are to me. In the end, I would like them to know that I always wanted to do my best, even when I didn’t actually manage.