Today is Mother’s Day in the US and a few other countries around the world, and I’ve been reflecting on my relationship with my own mom and how it’s impacted how I raise my children. It’s made me realize just how similar we are and how I’ve become more and more like her over the years.
Physically, I’ve always been very like my mom. We are the same height and have the same hair color and skin tone. We wear the same size shoes and clothing, which has come in handy for me many times as I’ve gone into her closet looking for just the right thing to wear to an event. Our voices are very similar, as well. Back in the day when you had to call one phone to reach any member of a given family, I was often confused for her, by both strangers and friends.
My mom loves giving gifts, especially to the people she loves, so she has given me countless gifts over my lifetime. I have reminded her many times that I am now an adult with my own family, and she doesn’t actually have to buy things for me anymore. But she loves to give, and so the celebratory gifts haven’t stopped.
This year, though, I’ve been thinking about all the gifts she has inadvertently given me:
Her laugh. My mom has a big laugh, and mine is just the same, which has gotten me into trouble with others more than once. (I’d like to publicly apologize to Andrea and Kristin, who in university had to repeatedly bang on the wall when I was laughing too loudly while they were trying to study.) Mom also loves to laugh, especially at herself. What a gift it was to grow up in a family that was always laughing, usually at each other’s expense.
Her love of food. Both sides of my family are blessed with excellent cooks and people who are always happy to eat what is being served. My mom happens to fit into both categories. She can whip up a meal for 30 people in no time and make it look absolutely effortless. There is more than one dish for which she is famous in our little town, and even though she has shared all her recipes with me, my versions never taste as good. Growing up, one of us girls always had a friend around, and she was always happy to add in an extra person or two to our meals. Even today, as adults, my friends or my sisters’ friends will pop in on my parents and Mom will fix them something to eat, usually a dish that she remembers them loving.
Her penchant for projects. Friends of my mom often refer to her as the Energizer Bunny because she never stops! She is a full-time teacher, volunteers at church, and is involved in the local theatre. In addition to all these things, she always has a project going. She loves DIY projects and, due to my parents’ involvement in several properties around town, there is always something that needs doing. During this quarantine time she has repainted most of the inside and outside of her house, refurbished several items of furniture, and learned how to use a mitre saw. Unfortunately, I did not receive her eye for interior design, so my projects usually don’t turn out nearly as well. Inexplicably, I keep doing them.
Her love of music and theatre. Singing and dancing were absolutely normal and expected parts of my childhood. We sang at home, at church, at the theatre, in the car, on the street. Going to see a show at the theatre was also a regular occurrence. It was usually the local theatre with amateur productions, but we loved it and would continue singing the songs and re-enacting our favorite scenes for weeks after. While I didn’t inherit my mother’s acting ability, I do inundate my children with musical theatre references. If we’re listening to music, it’s nearly always the soundtrack to a film or stage production. I hope my own children will look back on it with the same sense of fondness that I do.
Her sense of adventure. There are not a lot of pictures of my mom when she was young, primarily because she was the fifth child and grew up in the 60s. One of the few pictures I have seen, though, is of her as a teenager in Spain. She had traveled to Europe with a school group and volunteered to participate in a bullfight! The picture is of her holding the matador’s cape with the bull running at her. We also now have pictures of her jumping out of an airplane, hiking mountains in Hong Kong, and snorkeling in Thailand, and those are all in the last ten years!
Thank you, Mom, for the countless ways that you have helped nurture me and allowed me to grow as a person and a mom. I hope to be as generous with my time, talents, and space as you are with both family and strangers. Thank you for the gift of your love, and thank you for showing me what it means to be selfless and courageous for the ones you hold dear. Happy Mother’s Day!
