Happy Mother’s Day
By David Myers
As Mother’s Day approaches, I find that my
admiration for moms is equal to my appreciation that I’m not one myself. First,
it would be confusing, seeing as I’m a guy. Second, I’m not entirely thrilled
with the idea of going into labor; I’ve heard it stings. Third, from what I
understand, infants are yet unable to change their own diapers. I would have
thought that by now the scientific community would have solved this explosive
problem. How disappointing. And fourth, if given a choice, I prefer
sanity.
I really cannot begin to understand how
moms do it. It’s mind-boggling. Even as I type this, I am truly boggled.
First comes the
pain of childbirth. As the story goes, God sentenced women throughout eternity
to suffer unbelievably awful pain when they give birth because a woman long,
long ago in a garden far, far away bit into an apple. Yet when one considers
the logistics of the birthing process, I would assume that even if Eve had
avoided the apple like the plague, giving birth would still hurt.
(I once ate a forbidden piece of oatmeal
cake moments before supper and was sentenced to “no TV for the rest of the
night.” But an evening without a Bonanza rerun is a far cry from the pains of
childbirth, or so I’ve been led to understand.)
Once the newborn comes home, the mother
quickly realizes that she has given birth to a crying/pooping machine. In days
of old, when most husbands worked and most wives stayed home, it was the wife’s
job to wake up several times a night to feed or change their child.
Times have changed. Today, as women have
taken the role of co-bread-winner, the wife will change the diapers an average
of 2.7 thousand times in the first two years of the child’s life, while the husband
will change it approximately 11 times. The latter figure has increased by 11
from the days of old.
Eventually, the child begins sleeping
through the night. But relax ye not, moms, for by then the toddler has entered
the “Terrible Twos,” during which time the child takes on the characteristics
of chimpanzee set free in your living room after two years of captivity.
With a seemingly endless supply of energy,
the child’s mind is an open book, his curiosity at a peek. He will become like
a little Dr. Science, asking himself important questions, like what would
happen if he were to coat the little tray on your DVD player with Cheese Whiz.
Your little girl will wonder why no one else had discovered that the toilet can
flush lipstick and necklaces and wristwatches. With a little clipboard in hand,
she’ll take notes as Mommy’s best nylons disappear down the toilet.
But the years when the mental and emotional
capacity of the mother is truly put to the test is when the child reaches the …
teen years (insert thunder clap here). Because, no matter how much love and
affection the child has received, this is when the parents become stupid.
They don’t understand what it’s like to be
a teenager! They’re like, so wack!
Teenagers are slowly beginning the breaking
away process. They’re groping for independence. They’re discovering who they
are. All of which makes them quite annoying at times, at least to their
parents, whom they deem as inferior beings and thus dismiss with a roll of the
eyes when told to come home before 11 p.m. (Before Youth Director Steve Polley
bonks me on the head for writing the above, I must stress that not all teens
are annoying to their parents. But just to be safe, I will be wearing a
football helmet to work for the next few days.)
Yet, despite all the heartache, all the
struggles, all the gnashing of brace-covered teeth, the child remains housed
deeply in his or her mother’s heart, a womb away from womb so to speak.
Children hold the heart of their mother in their hands. And when you’re holding
something as fragile as a heart, it’s easy to cause it injury.
It’s been a tough go for moms in the last
few years. They’ve been forced to say goodbye to their sons and daughters
marching off to war, creating months of worry and heartache. We’ve seen kids in
their classroom -- whether at Virginia Tech or at an Amish one-room school
house -- killed as they sat at their desk.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one
way that moms have the strength to be moms. You know that “love” that sometimes
brings such anxiety? Well, that same love is what gives them the strength each
morning to be moms.
Happy Mother’s Day.