Happy Mother's Day

     Today is Mother's Day. For weeks the stores have been reminding everyone to buy the cards, the candy, the flower baskets, the nicknacks, make brunch reservations, and for pete's sake, don't forget to call her!  It's her day!
      We come in all shapes and sizes, temperaments and dispositions, all carrying our own baggage.
      Some mothers aren't much to speak of.  We read about them in the newspapers and hear about them on the 11 o'clock news.  Their children come to school ill prepared because the mother was ill prepared.  We put an arm around these children and try to be the something soft in their lives.
      Some mothers hover over every aspect of life.  We call them 'helicopter moms' always hovering, making the path clear of any obstruction, making excuses, enabling, defending to the death.  Mother bears.
     Some mothers are soft spoken, sweet, and seem to have doting children who wouldn't pass a day without speaking together.
     Some mothers are less so, the kind who want their children to learn the ways of the world both good and bad on their own. No hovering.
      Some mothers had as examples their own mothers, who learned from their mothers, who learned from theirs and on it went.  By now you'd be in the Old World and expectations of parents and behaviors of children were vastly different than they are now. Sometimes those examples were an inspiration.  And sometimes we learned how not to be.  Like the mother on the 11 o'clock news. And we wonder about her.  "How could she?" we say.  But we don't know where she came from, do we?  We don't know what's in her baggage.
     Some mothers would be given plaques that say, "Mom, you are the inspiration for my life" and some mothers would not. Some will be feted today and some will sit looking out a window with a tear in their eyes, forgotten by the lives she brought into the world.
     For, yes, we all arrived in this world the same way.  And whether or not we are the World's Greatest Mother or had one as our own, as mothers in our own right, we did the best we could, the best we knew how, we did try.
     I hope everyone has a day where you are remembered for trying.