Mother's Day .....thanks Mom

I Owe My Mother

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1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE.
"If you're going to kill each other, do it outside. I just finished cleaning."

2. My mother taught me RELIGION.
"You better pray that will come out of the carpet."

3. My mother taught me about TIME TRAVEL.
"If you don't straighten up, I'm going to knock you into the middle of next week!"

4. My mother taught me LOGIC.
" Because I said so, that's why."

5. My mother taught me MORE LOGIC.
"If you fall out of that swing and break your neck, you're not going to the store with me."

6. My mother taught me FORESIGHT.
"Make sure you wear clean underwear, in case you're in an accident."

7. My mother taught me IRONY.
"Keep crying, and I'll give you something to cry about."

8. My mother taught me about the science of OSMOSIS.
"Shut your mouth and eat your supper."

9. My mother taught me about CONTORTIONISM.
"Will you look at that dirt on the back of your neck!"

10. My mother taught me about STAMINA.
"You'll sit there until all that spinach is gone."

11. My mother taught me about WEATHER.
"This room of yours looks as if a tornado went through it."

12. My mother taught me about HYPOCRISY.
"If I told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate!"

13. My mother taught me the CIRCLE OF LIFE.
"I brought you into this world, and I can take you out."

14. My mother taught me about BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION.
"Stop acting like your father!"

15. My mother taught me about ENVY.
"There are millions of less fortunate children in this world who don't have wonderful parents like you do."

16. My mother taught me about ANTICIPATION.
"Just wait until we get home."

17. My mother taught me about RECEIVING.
"You are going to get it when you get home!"

18. My mother taught me MEDICAL SCIENCE.
"If you don't stop crossing your eyes, they are going to get stuck that way."

19. My mother taught me ESP.
"Put your sweater on; don't you think I know when you are cold?"

20. My mother taught me HUMOR.
"When that lawn mower cuts off your toes, don't come running to me."

21. My mother taught me HOW TO BECOME AN ADULT.
"If you don't eat your vegetables, you'll never grow up."

22. My mother taught me GENETICS.
"You're just like your father."

23. My mother taught me about my ROOTS.
"Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"

24. My mother taught me WISDOM.
"When you get to be my age, you'll understand."

And my favorite:

25. My mother taught me about JUSTICE.
"One day you'll have kids, and I hope they turn out just like you

Thanks for the day-brightener. Not only did I hear those from my mom, but I've said most of them to my children!

Nice........
Lost my momma December 5th, 2004..
Alzheimers took her long before that.
All I can say is that I am glad I had 7 years with her before that date, even though she didnt know me for a few before she left us.
Maybe she did, but it was here and there.
dont know if was months or years, but glad we kept her at home, so I could take care of her.........
I am glad that I was a major part of her life, even if she wasnt sure who I was. I knew and maybe she knew, but the most important part was, that she was at home with family when she passed.
(to me, and I understand that it cant always work out that way-I am lucky that we could keep her at home)---
Mom, I miss you.
Glad you are at peace..............

Hello All,
Mother's Day is more stressful to me than Christmas. How do I show this wonderful
woman how much I love her?
Oh, Mom isn't perfect. That was the time when I was 7, and the family was returning
home in a near blizzard. We were inching up in our car on a hill from hell, the car
slipping and sliding all over this county road. The car was moving at 5 mph and went
into a frightening slide, and Mom opened her door and jumped out. That was a shocker.
I didn't understand if she was abandoning us to save herself or being Jonah and sacrificing
herself by jumping ship and expecting to end up in the belly of a land whale. It still disturbs me.
But I feel very lucky to have my Mom as my mother, especially after reading these quotes...
Marguerite Oswald, mother of Lee Harvey Oswald..."Mr. Johnson should remember that I am not just
anyone and that he is only President of the United States by the grace of my son's action."
Maria Reva, daughter of Marlene Dietrich said, "Never turn to your mother for help when
she has just had an abortion."
And I admired Betty Friedan, but her words in "The Feminine Mystique" hurt my heart, though
I really understand her yearnings, "As she made the beds, shopped...ate peanut butter sandwiches with her
children...lay beside her husband at night--she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent
question--'Is this all?'"
I feel very blessed. My Mom asked the question, "Is this all?" and went through a period of
examination and answered, "No, it is not all, but it is a part of my life that I love and desire."
What I find strange, but not disturbing, is that all my life people have said, "You're just like
your Mother." That's probably the only reason why my Pop put up with me.
Oh, by the way...number 23 "Shut that door behind you. Do you think you were born in a barn?"
Mary used to say the same thing to Jesus, except it was, "Shut that door behind you. Do you think
you were born in a manager?" (Ahhh, that was such a bad joke. Sorry.)
Take Care,
Fieldthistle

You folks were lucky. When I saw "Mommie Dearest" and Joan Crawford was beating the daughter w/ a wire coat hanger all I could think was that kid was lucky to have such a good mother. ONLY a wire hanger? My mother preferred a riding crop or an electric cord.

My mother passed five or so years ago and I thought it was fitting that when I scattered her ashes it killed the grass.

That's sweet and so on the money!
My Mama is my best bud now though who knew back in the day when I was getting my azzzzzz whipped on a daily basis! Back in the day when you knew you were loved because of said whippin'.

She lives with me now and not a minute goes by I'm not grateful for having such a terrific woman to call my Mama. At 85 she can still make me look down at my feet making sure my answer to a question is the right one. That or shut my mouth!

"Thanks Mama" will have to do because I cannot express my graditude for my luck at that great cosmic wheel of parental fortune that made me such a big winner.
My only regret is she didn't get something better to work with than our unruly crew.
Somehow she turned us all (five of us, plus all the surrogates and strays) into human beings while being a single widow in the sixties. Working two and three jobs to keep us fed and warm in a nice house in a good neighborhood. Yet she still found the time to do the school things and make us all feel special in our own ways !

She's such a class act that Thanks seems inadequate but it's the best I can do...She's that tough of an act to follow...I love ya sweety!!!

Frank, I thought I posted this before but I guess I hit the wrong button for it is not hear.

THANK YOU, for your post. It made my MIL smile today (which was a good thing after a bad day at radiation)

This will be the last Mother's Day we will be able to celebrate with her, so we are planning a big family get together. I printed off the list and will pass it around this Sunday.

Roossy I'm just at the beginning of that end and I can only hope for the strength it took for you.
I'm so very grateful for the chance to give as much as I can back to my #1 girl but I have my self doubts. I know it's only going to get harder as that enemy, time, has it's way.
Thanks for your sharing some of your experience as it eases some of the doubts.
I know that I'm far from the first and certainly won't be the last to go on this journey.
It really does help to read of the joy, love and time spent that's not lost. It helps especially on the bad day's when confusion is king of the realm and we just wait out the fog.
When the clarity returns and the sparkle comes back in her eyes it can seem to be like a bad dream and I can fool myself into believing it's just a phase or freaky little incident. I know it's not, yet I want to believe.

Words such as yours helps bring the reality in harmony with that joy! It helps with the fear I feel and that helps me at least try to ease some of her fear that of course she does not want me to see (bless her sweet BIG heart).
I wish sometimes that I was anyone else but I would not trade places with a soul!
Am I a Mama's boy? You Betcha!


Again thanks for sharing some of your thoughts and experience! I bet your Mama was a quite the pistol!!!

I lost my mom to Alzheimer's when she was 57, mentally that is. Physically she wasted away for another 13 years. I miss her dearly. It did bring Dad and I much closer which was a good thing. God love the Moms of this world.

MikeS.

This is not mine and grabbed from a Blog, (http://chickychickybaby.blogspot.com/2007/05/motherhood-means-sometimes-having-to.html) but I thought her words poignant on this Mother's day.

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"There we sat that evening, my mother and me, a year or two before she died, in one of those pop-up, camper-trailers. We were parked in the middle of a college running track, our designated spot for our Relay for Life team. With us that night was my sister, Mom's boyfriend, and a couple of her closest friends. Our small group sat in the dark, our emotions already running high from all that was going on outside the zip-up walls of the camper, and we talked. We talked not like a mother and her friends would with her children, but as adults. We shared stories, laughed at past foibles, and gossiped. We offered details about ourselves that, if not for the intimate setting and the perceived safety that darkness offers, we might have never shared.

As often happened when my mom and I were together our chatter led us to reminiscing about my tumultuous teen years. It was a saga I was tired of hearing; how I was a little s**t and caused my poor, suffering mother years of frustration and pain.

The abridged version for those of you who care: From the age of 12 to 17 my mother and I, more alike than we wanted to admit, were at war. The details aren't important. The bottom line is we both wanted control of my life and neither was willing to give an inch. She was over-protective to a fault and I did more than my fair share of testing the limits of my boundaries.

As far as my relationship with my mother is concerned I wouldn't do much to change those years. I was, after all, a teenager learning to be independent. And she was a mother struggling with the maturation of her first born. Neither one of us knew what the hell we were doing.

But that night... I don't know if it was her advancing illness, her sense of mortality, or the intimacy of the setting, but instead of poking fun of the 16 year old me my mother, the woman who had tried to keep me pinned down like a butterfly in a shadow box- presumably for my own good - apologized to me.

I think it is safe to say that there won't be many moments in my life as profound as the night my mother told me she was sorry for not always doing the right thing when it came to raising me. How many of you have heard an apology like that from your parents? Yeah, those four or five years when all we did was fight and all the tears we shed and the months we spent not talking? I royally screwed up. Sorry about that.

Those weren't the words she used, of course, but I don't really remember what her exact words were. I remember looking to her friend for confirmation. My eyes said, Did I really just hear my mother tell me she was wrong? Her friend nodded in agreement. They had obviously talked about this before.

My mother felt she was wrong and she was sorry.

She wasn't wrong, however. She made some big mistakes but they were all in my best interest. I wasn't wrong, either. Because of my mother's apology I know that now. I was a young, stupid kid filled with hormones. But to hear this woman who had held such power over me admit that she made mistakes, took the wrong stance, was unfair at times... that really knocked me for a loop. It didn't set things right entirely but it changed how I viewed our relationship.

Now I'm the mother and I screw up all the time. If there's a hard and fast right way to parent I haven't found it yet, so I'm bound to make more and that's just the way it is. I'm not infallible and I'm learning to live with that. Hell, I'm learning to embrace that fact. Just because I have some pretty stupid lapses in reason does not make me a bad mother. If I can learn from those mistakes it will, eventually, make me a damn good mother. And it didn't make my mom a bad mother, either. I mentioned before that she wasn't the best but she was pretty damn good. She had to have been or I wouldn't have turned out as well as I did.

Before she died my Mom gave me a few very important gifts, one being that apology. I was finally able to see my mother as the fragile person she was and that made me feel so empowered. Not because I saw her as weak but because she had the strength to admit that she was flawed. She was a mother and there is no place for perfection in motherhood. In that moment, when she let go and dropped her guard, she taught me what she couldn't all those years before. Life is not about hiding from what scares us, it's about making mistakes. How else do we learn?

One day, when she's old enough to understand, I will begin telling my daughter that I make mistakes. Not just small ones but big gaffes. I don't want her to wait until she's thirty, after she's lived decades questioning herself and her choices. I want her to know that I mess up but that I try to learn from every misstep and poor decision. I want her to know that all good mothers do. I'm human. I'm a mother, a good mother, and those mistakes will help me be the best mother I can be."