This weekend May in the south skipped right to summer with some hot and sunny weather. Per my request, we didn’t plan a thing for Mother’s Day. I was hoping for the wide open day with my family with nowhere to be. When life is busy, it’s the unplanned days I look forward to the most.
It was like most Sundays with an early rise time of 6:30AM to get 3 little early birds and myself dressed and fed in time to get to 9AM mass. Gabe hadn’t stirred yet after our late night date to see a movie the night before, and it was his only day of the week to get a little more sleep. I had already dissolved several squabbles, picked up a couple spills off the floor, and franticly searched the laundry basket for a pair of clean underwear for Veronica. Forget my hair, it would have to settle for the frizzy mess it was, because I had two curly little manes to detangle instead.
However, I did wake up to two voices downstairs whispering to each other….
I got to open two packaged cards with crooked tape across the top, some skewed letters on the front and little surprises inside. Gabriel wrapped up a sharpie marker he found around the house because he said he knew I liked them. His name was written out proudly on the back of the card (a new skill he learned in Kindergarten this year). Veronica had spent a while coloring a flower garden and wrapping up a picture of me and my sister she had found on the fridge. In another envelope she had packaged up a few of her favorite purse trinkets. They couldn’t wait to give them to me and I got a few more squeezes around the neck than usual. I teared up because I couldn’t believe they were mine to raise.
Gabe stumbled downstairs close to 8AM with a new cappuccino maker wrapped in Christmas paper. He had snuck out with Max the day before on a “secret mission.” His thoughtfulness and dedication to our marriage is what I really see underneath the wrapping. I look at him with prayers of gratitude that he is the one I get to raise our children with. After church (to which we were late to just like every other Sunday..), Gabe made us all a big brunch. My brother came over, and we spent the day at the pool, took some long deliciously deep naps, and finished the evening with an ice cream run.
Just like every other day my patience grew short by with a crabby 4 year old, my back was sore from lifting my clingy toddler, and I was weary by the end of the day from settling fights about sharing toys. After the kids fell asleep I cleaned a messy kitchen and made sure things were in order for the last school week of the year.
Motherhood never takes a break. You receive it with open arms the moment your first child enters your life, and you continue to keep those arms open until death. And as you spend your time, energy, emotion every waking moment on their well being, your whole being changes. These every day moments stacked into days and years is what produces an instrument capable of giving and receiving love in depths you never thought you were humanly capable of. Your limits are pushed, bent, and broken, and you become an instrument with a great ability to receive and distribute love. With the grace of God you become a constant source of life for your children. You are now the receiver and the giver.
Just like every other mother, I will never be able to find the words in the human language to describe the receiving part. The part where you experience unearthly joy and happiness only received when you give over a part of yourself to another.
I hope you all had a beautiful weekend! As always, thanks for being a reader and accompanying me on this wild adventure of motherhood:)
