All Things Mom

“What I Wanted for Mother’s Day”… I came across this title the other day over at the Tales from the Mommy Track web site. It was sweet—deliciously so—and I highly suggest you take a moment to read. Anyone who has ever been called Mom will appreciate it, the rest of you might learn something.

Walking later that afternoon, sans ipod (amazing how much you can think when you turn off the noise) I began to compile my own list of what I had wanted for Mother’s Day.

Wait! Don’t get me wrong. I did have a lovely Mother’s Day! The judge gave me the beautiful Citizen watch I’d been eyeing for the last month or so, and I received two beautiful, detailed bird houses to add to my collection. After presents and brunch (at the restaurant where our oldest was working!), we went to the Cowiche Creek Nursery, loaded up on plants, and came home, where I puttered around the yard for most of the remainder of the day. It was pretty perfect.

Birdhouses and jewelry and plants are often on my wish lists, because I like them and they are possible. But like Risa Green on Tales from the Mommy Track, there are a few other “gifts” I’d love to receive.

My Top 10 Gifts-for-Mom

1. I want everyone in our house to be in a good mood. For a whole day.

2. I want the dog poop in the yard to be picked up. Weekly. And not by me.

3. I want to be able to find the super glue/duct tape/flat head screwdriver when I need it.

4. I want my children (teens) to stop insulting each other with phrases like, “You’re a vagina!”

5. I want everyone to quit saying, “It’s not mine,” when asked to put something away.

6. I want to have all three of my babies (again, teens) lounge with me on the couch.

7. I want everyone to stop coughing and be well.

8. I want to get the kinds of gifts my babies used to make in school, wrapped in wrinkled brown paper bags that have been carefully sponge painted with rabbits.

9. I want all the dark laundry to be brought to me before I do the dark load.

10. When they go to bed at night, for the rest of their lives, I want my babies to always know how much I love them.

Really. Is that asking too much?

This year I did it. I consciously made NO resolutions. Not even the old standby: "To write more."

Because it's really just another day. January 1, December 12, June 7... It's just another day.

And by really thinking about hopes and goals, by telling myself, "This is the year!," I'm setting myself up for failure.

Again.

Because isn't every year The year?

I continue to change and grow (or shrink). I let go and grab on to knew things. And it seems frequently, perhaps always, I am aware of what I did wrong... "I have sinned through my own fault, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do..."

So rather than set major goals... especially the kind that life frequently goes against... rather than setting myself up for a measurement that CAN ALWAYS IMPROVE... I'm going to become more aware, and simply, be more ME.

You may think that's nothing... to be more ME. But as a don't rock-the-boat, smooth-over-every-rough-surface, avoid-the-unpleasant kind of girl I am, this is really kind of huge.

I will continue reading zen-ish blogs and following love-yourself writers. That part won't be hard.

I will make a little time to do nothing and just BE... that will take a little more effort.

And I will, eventually, become better at Being who I am--as opposed to being the person I think the world wants me to be.

So there.