September 3, 2007
My Life as a Mother
Whoa … Once the hauling, labor and delivery are done - Wham Bam you are a Mother!! You have not changed your role as Wife, you still clean, cook, wash, etc., just now, more so. However, you now have a few added items to your daily list to have checked off. You soon learn that your capacity to Love has increased 100 fold, and for some reason, your capacity for patience has decreased equally. I have found that over time these two important factors will sea-saw, somehow, someday, they will balance (maybe in the next life).
As these dear little ones grow, we also learn to adjust to every day life with new twists. Bumps, scratches, cuts, stitches, broken bones, bruised hearts, hopeful souls. We learn to deal with trama, drama, lost or undone homework, upset feelings and teachers. We then move on to High School, Seminary, church responsibilities, cars, dating, curfews… late nights in a chair.. (oops - that’s dad) - I did not really worry - I felt I had raised my children to be trusted. Then we move on to College, Missions, Marriage, Grandchildren - Wow!!!
During these years, we have been self-employed, employed by temporary companies, and finally fully employed by some business, trying to keep our heads above water and our children happy. Now we find ourselves at “middle age” and wondering where it has all gone. The youth, the get up and go, the figure, and the grace. We still deal with drama, trama, upset feelings and un-done homework (only in some cases, it is more long distance). Still, all emotional and expensive (this being relative to time, money and emotion).
I have learned to love all aspects of my family, all personality quarks, and all the drama. In my personal family we had the saying of “never a dull moment at the Durham’s” - could almost be true of my current family. We have so many ups and downs that it really is like living on a roller coaster - only the end is not so easily seen, being that on a real coaster, the end and the beginning are the same place.
FYI - it is now 11:53 on September 3, 2007 - Labor Day. Dad and I have just gotten home from the hospital - Alex did a crash and burn, on his friend, Nate’s perpetual motion skate board. He fell off of it about 9:00 pm - we met them (Alex and Brian) at St. Mark’s Emergency at 9:15 pm and we just now got home. Alex is not allowed to work his hand/arm for 4 weeks. He has to see the orthopedic doctor on Friday. I guess it is just one more section of the roller coaster. Cody seems to have fully recovered from his appendicitis. He could not go to work for 2 weeks. Dad mentioned that it all started with my flying leap down the stairs.
We went down, on Saturday, to Mt. Pleasant and visited with Grandma and Aunt Linda. They were not expecting company - Grandma has not been well lately, she has a bone condition that starts with her kidneys - they, the kidneys, need to produce a hormone that tells the bone to make blood - it is not doing that - so she has to go to the hospital in Mt. Pleasant once a week to get a shot that tells the kidneys to work. She has Parkinson’s Disease, meaning she shakes a lot and will eventually lose the ability to do anything. She is still a diabetic. She takes 5 pills one day and 4 the next, then 5, then 4 - she has a chart to keep her on schedule. She will be 80 on November 8th this year. Linda is finally the Center Manager for the HeadStart program down there - she has an opening on Tuesday. She still had a lot of work to do for them to open. The kitchen was not even intact, and the eating area looked like a storage area. Good Luck to her - she really had to work today.
Well, with all the emotional, physical, financial drama - being a Mother really is hard work. I would NOT trade it for anything in this world. Each day is a time of new possibilities, what will tomorrow bring? I hope I can take the best possibilities and look back on my life and say, “Well done. Good Job. Nicely Spent. What Happiness I have enjoyed.” I am happy to be a Mother - I am excited that I am a Grandmother. May the Lord bless my family and may I live to enjoy everyone of them and those they bring along for the ride.
Tags: Alex, Car, Church, Hospital, Life, love, Mother, School |
wow mom that was a good article (even if I do say so myself). I am glad that motherhood brings so many joys with all the downs (stress) that go with it. I love you.
~Pam
So I was going to keep this comment to myself, and then mom asked me what I thought about her “Mom” article, and I mentioned that there was one part I wan(/)ted, would like to comment on, and she instantly knew which part I was referring to. Sha said go ahead.
We(royal)would like to go on record that its not that we(royal) don’t/didn’t trust you, it was more along the lines of, we care about you, and what you did and wanted you to know that we did. (And this is not to insinuate that mom didn’t care, she was awake, (just not in a chair,) and if not when you, (collective/individually) (and you know who you are) got home then certainly when I got to bed.
(Its kind of along the lines of those anti-drug commercials, ie: Involvement-the anti-drug. or Questions-the anti-drug.
Anyway its not that we didn’t trust you it’s those that you hung out with, that we didn’t trust. And it’s not necessairly a queation of trust, it’s more a question of judgement. Teenagers tend to make poor judgements, not because they’re stupid, but because they lack experience, and it’s easy to give into peer pressure, and besides the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight.
Mom wonders, if I wonder, if I hadn’t stayed up in the chair if y’all would have come in earlier…yea, right! I told her that that thought never even crossed my mind.
How do you edit a comment that you have already made?