Too Young but Blessed

“Children are the anchors that hold a mother to life.” (Sophocles)

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you. As I told the people at church this morning, we can all be thankful we had a mother because we all do.  Usually on Mother’s Day, I write about my mother. If you look through my archives and search for Mother’s Day, you would find several Mother’s Day tributes to my mom, both before she headed on up to heaven and afterwards too. My mom was a great mom. I was blessed to have her love and support for so many years.

But tonight I’m coming from the other side of the coin and being glad that I am a mother. I was blessed with three children. A boy, then a girl, and last another boy. I was very young when my first son was born. Only seventeen. When I think back on that and watch some of  my grandchildren reach that age, it seems so very young to me now but at the time I didn’t feel too young. I felt blessed to have a child to make me a mother. And blessed to have a mother who helped this too young mother figure out how to take care of my baby. She never made me feel too young either although I’m sure she may have thought I was.

I liked being a mother so much that I had another baby when my first baby was only twenty-one months old. So I really had two babies. Thank goodness, my daughter was perhaps the best baby in the world in that she slept through the night almost right away and was happy almost all the time. I’ll never forget her giggles the first time I rocked her to sleep. I didn’t need to rock her. She was content to be put in her crib and doze off on her own. I hadn’t rocked her to sleep to keep from spoiling her because I had rocked my son miles and miles trying to get him to sleep. With him, I’d rock and rock. I’d be sure he was asleep as he would seem relaxed but when I stood up and peeked at his face in the mirror, his pretty little eyes would be staring back at me. So I was determined not to turn my daughter into a high maintenance baby if she was content to fall asleep on her own. So that day when I did rock her to sleep, she giggled. And I felt guilty for not rocking her more prior to that.

Don’t we mothers find plenty to feel guilty about?

But whatever I did wrong and I made plenty of missteps as a mother, my children grew up fine and found their wings to fly away from me. That’s as it’s meant to be.

Still, sometimes they fly back to me for visits and talk. Last week, my daughter and I spent a week together. She took some time away from her job as a physical therapist and attended a writer’s retreat with me even though she has never had any interest in writing. She did enjoy meeting all the other writers and getting a glimpse into my writing world. Then we headed to the beach for a little mother/daughter R and R for a couple of days. We sat in the sun and told family stories. We talked about books and flowers. We enjoyed watching the kids and the dogs on the beach and managed to greet a few of the dogs we met. We walked miles and miles at sunrise and sunset along by the ocean waves. Such a beautiful place to walk. We often mentioned how crazy Frankie would probably be if he had been there with us at the ocean. My daughter often takes her dog with her on trips to the beach, but we agreed that might not have been a good idea with Frankie.  He would have gone crazy trying to see every kid and dog on the beach in between pouncing on the waves. He’s better off on the farm. Well, at least I was better off with him on the farm. 🙂

But it was a sweet time of being together for my daughter and me. A mother daughter retreat to follow the writers’ retreat earlier in the week.

Have you ever gone on a family vacation with one or all of your adult children?

And the Newsletter The Refuge Celebration Contest winners are —

Taking off for the beach and retreat got me behind on everything. So although I promised to pick the winners last Sunday, I didn’t get it done until today. I do thank all of you for entering and telling me all the wonderful things you love about springs. I love many of those same things. And the world did go completely green while I was away last week with flowers popping up and blooming out.

So the winners are: Loren G. is the first place winner of the Shaker broom and one of my books. Connie Lee and Theresa N. were the second place winners and won their choice of one of my books. I’ve sent the winners an e-mail.

Now I need to get to work on my story and find those magical two words “the end.”  As always, thanks for reading.