I don’t care what you guys say - MY mom is the best!
I wrote this note for a project my parents’ chaplain put together for military moms on Mother’s Day a few years ago. Since I hadn’t posted it on the blog, I thought now was an appropriate time to do so. Love you mom!
As an Air Force Brat, I grew up with a pretty privileged, sheltered life. Of course, I didn’t realize it then β and sometimes still forget how blessed I was, and am. It wasn’t till I went away to college that I began to uncover the idyllic tendencies of my upbringing.
It came as news to me that some people’s moms hadn’t always been there to answer the phone when they forgot their homework (and subsequently bring it to school for them). Or that most people’s days DIDN’T start with a home cooked breakfast and prayer before school β as they did for me β or get capped off with reading the classics (some of my favorite childhood memories). I also discovered that, post 1950’s, it wasn’t super-common for families to all sit down to dinner together β but we did, even if we had to wait till 8 pm, when dad got home from work.
The funny thing is, I think most people would describe my life as pretty hectic β and it was! Moving every couple years, having a dad who was out of town β in some jobs β nearly 50% of the time, changing schools, changing friends … changing therapists … :-). Change has always been a significant part of my life, yet on a day-to-day level my life was surprisingly β or, nowadays, maybe abnormally β normal. And I have my mom to thank for much of this. I’m not really sure how she managed to do it, and I KNOW there were a few years there where she thought it wouldn’t matter and I would turn out to be that weird, estranged daughter no one ever talked about.
Thanks in large part to her β though I would never have admitted it THEN β that never happened. Instead, my mom taught me the importance of faith and family and how to juggle those things in the face of real life - and how to make the right decisionΒ - about which balls to drop and which balls to keep in the air - when it really matters.
(ps, mom, you better be crying :-)
May 08 2010 05:11 pm | family and marriage and military and parents
June 20th, 2010 at 11:51 am
[...] to dinner as his father’s day gift last time we visited. On mother’s day, I posted a tribute I’d written for my mom several years back so for father’s day, I wanted to resurrect [...]