Mothers are Awesome!

Once upon a time, I hated guacamole. It was slimy and green, so it reminded me of throw-up. Similarly, I hated cooked onions for similar reasons – their sliminess and appearance reminded me of worms. Yes, I hated them… up until I didn’t. One day, I found them to be not bad at all. Now, I like guacamole and onions. Growing up changes your tastes and gives you a new perspective on life. I suppose that’s why I didn’t quite appreciate how awesome my mom was until I got older.

I’ve been loving my mom for as long as I can remember. That said, when I was a kid, I thought she was pretty ordinary. She wasn’t a rock star, a chef, or a university professor. She was a regular stay-at-home mom. Yes, I thought she was the best mom ever, but only because she was my mom. I appreciated her because she was mine, and I didn’t have to share her with anyone other than my brother. While that still counts for a lot nowadays, what I’ve experienced in the past few years has led me to appreciate my upbringing.

One thing that led me to appreciate her all the more was almost failing college. At first, I worked hard at completing my assignments. Slowly, I fell out of the habit of doing homework and going to class because of a lack of incentive and discipline. My mother had to step in and whip me into shape more than once due to my stubbornness. In the end, what got me back on track was my love for her. I didn’t want to be the kind of person who was so dependent on her that I couldn’t manage my own life, so I buckled down and did what I needed to do to graduate. The entire experience made me look back and realize just how hard my mom worked for our family’s benefit.

That was one of the things that caused me to appreciate my mother more. The other thing was meeting kids who had different home lives from me. There were kids whose mothers were too lenient and let them do whatever they wanted. There were kids whose mothers weren’t there for them, and those whose mothers they would’ve been better off without. All of these children had problems socializing with others and were desperate for advice on how to live in the world. Unfortunately, I’m no expert in that field, so I could only give what folk wisdom I’d managed to pick up over the years – the kind of advice that you see from time to time on this blog.

Comparing my mother to the mothers of these other kids gave me a new perspective on life in general and about parenting in particular. My mom wasn’t just great because she was my mom. She was also amazing relative to other moms too. I had thought that good moms were the norm when in fact they were the exception. As a child, all I had to compare my mom to were the other moms she was friends with, and my mom would never befriend someone who was a bad mom. More than that, I saw the world of difference that having a good mom had on these other kids. They had never obtained the kind of common sense and knowledge that I took for granted, not because they weren’t smart but because there was nobody there to teach them.

As we grow older and experience more and more, we come to appreciate the things we used to take for granted, especially when we meet people who didn’t have the kinds of blessings and privileges we had growing up. It’s important to be grateful for the good things in life – especially good mothers. To that, I say “Happy Mother’s Day!”