Where's My Mother's Day Award?

For me, Mother's Day should be my award ceremony for all the puking nights and frequent midnight soother searches under the bed. I used to be scared of spiders. Now I'm too tired to care.

And despite many meltdowns - begging the kids just to go to bed, loud growling noises that come out of me when homework or hair washing or grocery shopping turns into an overwhelming experience, and frequent tears of doubt about my ability to parent that follow all those moments of inadequacy - I know that no one would do as well for my kids as I am.

So where's my award?

*****

Do you ever feel like "Whoa, I can't handle all this responsibility?" Then, just when you think you're going to drown in your self-pity, someone gets sick or everyone gets sick, and you realize that actually you can go on. You realize that you are far more resilient than you ever imagined. All you needed was an important task to bring out the warrior inside that can handle anything.

Why does bath time wear me out so entirely but a week of sleepless nights with a puking child I can handle like a pro? Maybe, like in war, the constant crisis enables us to endure extreme exhaustion over long periods of time. Like war too, the sacrifices we make as mothers sometimes traumatize us for life.

*****

On Mother's Day I think about the moms out there who gave their kids up because they couldn't care for them anymore. Did they realize they were just too drug-addicted or poor to handle it anymore?