For Mother's Day

By Dondi Tondro-Smith

The celebration of Mother’s Day isn’t a new event or simply a Hallmark card holiday.  In fact, in ancient cultures dating back as far as 6,000 B.C., there was religious and ceremonial worship of the female capacity to give birth. We’ve all seen some form of those ancient statues - figurines with pregnant bellies and round, proportional hips.  In some Eastern cultures I’ve visited, shrines and altars are still being erected for mother goddess deities year-round. In civilizations, throughout time, festivals celebrated fertility rites in the spring to honor women’s miraculous ability to give birth.  

Today we buy jewelry, bake a cake, or get Mom some flowers.  But on this Mother’s Day (now that I’m in the club), I got to thinking, “Are these gestures really enough for the woman who gave birth to you?” Well of course not!  They are merely tokens of the affection we have for our mothers.  If we really want to thank mom, perhaps recognition of all the gigantic self-sacrificing actions she took to get you to adulthood would be more appropriate.  Acknowledging the pains she took to set boundaries with you, the times she healed your ouchies, and all the times she made you feel like the most important human being on the planet.

A mother never tells you how much work you were or how much she washed, worried, or labored after you. She doesn't talk about how much she juggled and planned and reworked her life to fit you in it. She does whatever needs to be done and manages to raise you.

The school of motherhood has literally kicked my hiney. When my daughter wakes at 3 a.m., she begins by kicking me in the belly or ribs.  I’ve usually brought her into bed by this hour as we’ve already been up nursing four times since I put her down at 7 p.m. Her kicking turns to smiling, smiling to drooling, drooling to laughing.  She will never know how tired I am.     

After almost six months of on-demand feedings she is the center of my selfless world.  I love her more than my heart ever expected to love.  We have become a package deal, inseparable, a unit of daily improv, trial, and error.  There is no more ‘me’ without her.

For my first Mother's Day, I am in a state of enhanced understanding of what it really means to be a mother.  I finally feel I deserve the title because the reality of motherhood has settled into my very bones. Yes, I celebrated when I was pregnant last year, but this year is much different!

I would like to thank my mother for her every sacrifice.  I thank her for coaching, schlepping, worrying, and doing her level best to provide me with the opportunities she didn’t have.  I  pay homage to her for all the efforts I knew nothing about, and for the message she just left on my machine, telling me once again how proud she is. And I would like to honor all the mothers, through all eternity, who’ve given themselves selflessly to life’s highest calling.
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Happy Mother's Day from the whole team at Little Pickle Press. We wish you all a marvelous day!