Skip to main content

Reflections of Mother’s Day

I hope all you writing mamas had a wonderful Mother’s Day. I wish I could share with all of you some wonderful moments from this Mother’s Day, but I cannot. What I thought was going to be a wonderful day ended up in complete disaster.

I guess the first sign it was going to be one of those days was when the girls starting waking up about every couple of hours. If it wasn’t Sabrina whimpering (our new baby) it was our five-year-old, Ashley crying out because of growing pains in her legs. To top it all off, Sabrina decided getting up at 6:00 am was a great idea and not going back to sleep until noon.

But I did not let the sleepless night get to me. No, I just pushed forward and started my day at 6:00 am. After getting the whole family up and out the door, we headed to a church meeting. I was really looking forward to the speakers and hearing some music to lift my spirits. However, I was met with total resentences from our fourteen-year-old son. On any other day, I would have chalked it up to him just being a teen, but for some reason I was shocked. Maybe because it was Mother’s Day and after all I did bring him into this world. But that did not stop him from pointing out all my faults as a mother while the speakers read poems and talks about why mothers are wonderful.

You can imagine how I must have been feeling. I felt I had let my children down. My writing was effecting how they saw me. But then my five-year-old put her hand on mine and said, “Mommy, I love you. You’re the best mommy ever. Don’t be sad. I want you to be happy.” I could feel the tears sting my eyes wanting to pour out. I looked down at my little baby and all I saw was total trust and love.

I again felt good about my choices until my hubby was about to drag our son out of the building for acting up. I, being the wonderful mom I thought I was, tried to calm both of them down. Which only led to my hubby pointing out, “Now our son thinks he can get away with acting like a real jerk in public because you’re afraid of me causing a scene by dragging him out.” I again felt like the worst mom and now wife.

The thing is . . . even though my Mother’s Day did not turn out the way I wanted it to; I know have a great scene in which I can use in a book. So I may not always be the best mom. But if I was, I would not have any material to use in my writings either. I guess you can say my fourteen-year-old without knowing it still gave me a Mother’s Day present . . . even if it was not the one I was looking for.

Looking back on yesterday I realized I still have a lot to learn about being a writing mama. Finding the balance is not always easy. My son only reminded me of that. I worked most of his young life and now as a teen he does not understand I am trying to make up for all the lost time. It’s nice to be home raising my children and doing what I love . . . writing, but my kids don’t always see it that way. Sometimes the muse strikes and I want to sit down and write, but my five-year-old decides it is time for me to play Candyland with her instead. Or maybe my son needs help with his science project. And now, I have a new baby who is also cutting into their time.

The other thing I realized is sometimes I am not always patient. I tend to blow a fuse when I don’t get done the things I wanted. The thing I need to remember is my work will always be there waiting for me, but my children will not. One day they will be adults, grown-up and out in the world. The reality is my son will be heading out to college in four years. My daughters won’t be far behind. Gone will be the days their little hands will wrap around mine and they will say, “Mommy, I love you. You’re the best mommy ever. Don’t be sad. I want you to be happy.”

Comments

  1. Aren't kids the most precious things, whether being on their best behavior or their worst? I'm sorry your Mother's Day was not all you had hoped it would be. I hope that today proves to be an absolutely wonderful day for you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Susanne. Today has been much better and lots of blog ideas are popping in my head. Plus the kids and I made a cake. Can't go wrong with cake. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for visiting my blog and for leaving a comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Interview Friday with Author Maggie Lyons

Maggie Lyons was born in Wales and brought up in England before gravitating west to Virginia’s coast. She zigzagged her way through a motley variety of careers from orchestral management to law-firm media relations to academic editing. Writing and editing nonfiction for adults brought plenty of satisfaction but nothing like the magic she discovered in writing fiction and nonfiction for children. Several of her articles, poetry, and a chapter book have been published in the children’s magazines Stories for Children Magazine and knowonder! VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today, Maggie. To get things started can you share what you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Maggie: Very fortunately for me, I’m retired and my son left the nest some time ago. That doesn’t mean I have no other commitments, of course. In fact, I’m very busy as a freelance editor, but I do have the privilege of being able to control m...

Writing Prompt Monday: The Challenge

The idea is too basically express yourself on paper, learn how to use your five senses, or build upon an idea. Think back to when you were in school, it used to only take your teacher saying, “Write a paragraph or one page composition on any subject you want.” This was all it used to take to get those creative juices flowing, but what about now? If you are like me and most writers I know, you have most likely experience the dreaded word “Writer’s Block” from time to time. Getting past this wide-eyed, blank page stare can be hard, and the flashing cursor does not help matters. What is a writer to do? Well it does not matter if you are a New York Best-selling author or an aspiring author, we all need a little creative boost from time to time and that is where my Writing Prompt Monday comes in. In my search for a writing prompt for this week, I came across a great site called Creative Writing Prompts . They have over 300 writing prompts to get your creative juices flowin...

Interview Friday: Author Sands Hetherington

Sands Hetherington credits his son John for being his principal motivator. Sands raised his son as a single parent from the time John was six. He read to him every night during those formative years. He and young John developed the Crosley crocodile character in the series during months of bedtime story give-and-take. Sands majored in history at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and has an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in English from UNC-Greensboro. He lives in Greensboro. VS: I want to thank you for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today. To get things started, Sands, what do you do to help balance your writing life with your family life? Sands: Hi Mama and thanks for having me over. Actually, my family life was part of my writing life. I was a single (male) parent of a six-year-old son. We always did bedtime stories. One night John invented a red crocodile named Crosley for an after-lights-out companion. This evolved directly into...