Mother's Day

This is my mother.









This is my mother with me (This photo was taken a long, long time ago).











My mother's accomplishments are many:

• She's an award-winning journalist.
• She wrote, published and marketed her own book.
• She's completed instruction to be a travel agent.
• She's also a medical transcriptionist.
  
• She's rafted through the Grand Canyon and through Yellowstone National Park.
• She's traveled to Great Britain, Europe, the Caribbean, and Indonesia.
  
• She makes and sells jewelry.
• Through the Bibb County Extension Service, she is a master gardener.
  
• She knits and crochets.
• She's a former editor of Women's Wear Daily and attended fashion shows with Dolly Parton and Spike Lee (even though at the time, she didn't know who Spike Lee was).
  
• She's a friend to cats.
• She's traced her family tree back so many generations I've lost count.
  

Pretty cool, huh? And those are just the things I know about. In recognition of all those accomplishments, I set about writing a blog posting to honor my mom on Mother's Day, but I'm not always good at writing off the cuff. She's much better at that than I am. After several failed attempts, I thought, "What better way to honor my mom than to violate her copyright and re-publish something much better that she wrote?" Hearing no objections, I present a column that she wrote just a few years ago for The Macon Telegraph (My own comments appear in brackets):

Six Thousand and Counting

In honor of Mother's Day, I decided to count up the day's I've been a mother. [She's a much braver soul than I am.]

The total is so staggering, I'm going to spend the rest of the day recuperating in bed. [Okay, not as brave as I thought].

Eighteen years, times 365 days, plus the extra months and odd days since my firstborn arrived [She's talking about my sister there], comes to 6,622 days of nonstop motherhood [I've only made it to an even 5,900].

I mention this only in order to establish my credentials. I am an Experienced Mother [Whereas I am only a moderately-experienced mother].

Unfortunately, experience doesn't count for much since each new day of motherhood brings astounding discoveries [You too?].

Mothers make more discoveries every day than Christopher Columbus in a lifetime [Well, he only gets credit for one big one].

If I try hard, close my eyes and really concentrate, I can remember what if felt like not to be a mother. The last time I wasn't a mother, I was 24 and ever so naive. It was an uncluttered, uncomplicated time [even though it didn't seem so uncomplicated then].

Now I am vastly wiser, and on this Mother's Day, I would like to share with my young readers--those who aren't mother's yet--some of the discoveries one makes during 6,622 days of motherhood.

Listen my children, and attend [I think she's talking to you, Lucy and Elizabeth].

• When you're in the hospital following childbirth, the nurses periodically bring the baby to your room. It's just adorable, wrapped in its little blanket and cooing softly. Look at that fuzzy round head. Look at those big, blue eyes, that rosebud mouth. Oh, how sweet. [Wasn't I precious?]
  
  It's after you get the baby home that you discover the truth about new babies. No one has told you that they can yell nonstop for hours no matter how much you feed them, rock them, walk them and croon inanities into their soft little ears [For the record, that wasn't me. That was Harley.]. And no one has told you that a baby, for all its tiny size and limited diet, can make worse smells than all Farmer Brown's Poland China pigs [Definitely Harley].
  
  Suddenly, you realize why the nurses smiled so happily as you and baby departed the maternity floor.
  
  
• Baby is 2. By this time, you've been spit up on, thrown up on, wet on and insulted in more odorous ways dozens of times. Now baby is toddling and has a full set of sharp little teeth. It's time for new discoveries.
  
  Baby loves to pull things off tables--like your china and crystal--and watch them smash on the floor [I thought Harley was 16 when he did that]. Baby puts rows of little tooth marks on the coffee table, the piano, and on you [I don't remember biting the piano, but I do remember carving Harley's initials in it.]. Baby eats bugs. She uses the manicure scissors to style her hair and trim the cat [Okay, in my defense, that hair cut was not much worse than the one Mrs. Womack always gave me at the barber shop, and mine was much cheaper!].
  
  
• Baby is 5, and you discover how adept she is with those little, dimpled hands. Baby finds daddy's toolbox and saws off two of her bedposts one day during naptime [Truly, I think that was really one of Mom's bad dreams]. Baby removes the windshield wipers from your car [But that did happen, and again, in my defense, Dad was really proud of me.] and all the knobs from the television set. She fluff-dries the cat in the clothes dryer.
  
  
• Now she is 6. Baby goes to school, and you discovers she isn't a genius after all. She hates homework, can't count and prints her letters backwards. At this point she's a tomboy--into tree-climbing and trampolines and is learning to ride a bicycle. You discover the emergency room and get to know its staff on a first name basis [I ran over a dead frog with my skateboard and broke my arm.]
  
  
• Baby is 8. She's freckle-faced, snaggle-toothed, and she wants a pony. Her room is full of stuffed animals, and she brings home stray kittens [That apple didn't fall far from the tree, did it?].
  
  One day she tells you she's built a tree house, and you're so proud--until you discover that she's used the slats from her bed and the center leaf from your dining room table, all hammered into your best magnolia tree with ten-penny nails [Now that claim is just pure fiction. But I guess it could happen in some American household].
  
  
• Now she's 12, and she's discovered boys and the telephone. She giggles a lot. She experiments with makeup and wants a bikini. You spend your time keeping track of where she is and who she's with. One day you look in the mirror and discover your first gray hairs and fine lines around your eyes--a direct result of constant vigilance [Many men consider those fine wrinkles of experience quite attractive. Shouldn't Mom thank me?]
  
  
• She's 16 and drives too fast. She calls boys "men." You make the shattering discovery that she has a curvy figure [Unfortunately, that was not me. There was never a curve on my lanky teenaged body. Sabra got all the good genes]. You regard all the boys as The Enemy, wait up for her to come in at night, and you pray a lot. More gray hairs, and the lines aren't so fine anymore.
  
  
• She's 18, and she has a job. She buys her own clothes and makeup and still brings home stray kittens. She's going to college [where the RA at the dorm wasn't so crazy about that kitten thing]. She's in love, and she asks for a later curfew. You discover that you're a very nervous person.
  

One other thing they don't tell you about motherhood is that these 6,622 days pass very quickly. In retrospect, it's hard to believe how fast it's all happened.

Happy Mother's Day!