Mother's Day 2022

Mother's Day 2022 Highlights: 

• Jeff was present and healthy in both mind and body, all day long. 
• Jay gave a very sweet talk in sacrament meeting at church.
• We didn't have time to take my traditional mother's day picture before church, but Jeff remembered and volunteered to take it after church. I slimmed down my mother's day requests to just this one picture, and I verbally asked for it rather than hoping it would happen on its own. 
• Amber and Rose gave me kind cards.
• My family said thank you for the dinner.
• I did not have any expectations for the day, and I felt at ease all day, not angsty or unloved. I did get a tad grouchy in the evening, but it wasn't mother's day grouch; it was a tired grouch. There's a big difference, haha.

All of those things seem small and not noteworthy, but they were momentous for me. Each item on this list made up for a past mother's day lack, and each was a wonderful unexpected balm. Mother's Day is sly, telling women that their families owe them special treatment on the second Sunday of May. This year I finally managed to banish that wily worldly idea early enough that mother's day was just another day. It was a relief to get to this point at last, because I have struggled for years with mother's day and unmet expectations. I finally managed to curb all expectations for mother's day this year, and it was a much happier day. Every little good thing that happened felt like a bonus rather than a baseline. 

Why was this mother's day so much better than the past five years? I have been working with my family on their behaviors that get under my skin all year rather than expecting them to suddenly disappear on mother's day. The main things that rub me raw the wrong way are when my family doesn't say thank you for the dinner. I realized this year that cooking on Mother's Day isn't really that big of a deal. My family can't cook anything that I can eat (they cook with all dairy all the time), so I am willing to cook dinner on mother's day. It's when they don't express gratitude for my culinary efforts that I struggle, and not just on mother's day. It just used to feel worse when they didn't say thank you on mother's day. But after many conversations and reminders, Jeff and the kids are slowly starting to make progress in the thanks-for-making-dinner department. For now. It's a half-step forward, two steps back kind of situation, but I recognize their efforts whenever they happen.

Ok, so we did sing Home Can Be a Heaven on Earth AND Love at Home during sacrament meeting. It always bugs me that we sing trite songs about home on mother's day because it feels so... confining? Not every mother is able to stay home all the time or chooses to stay home all the time, and those women are just as much mothers as women who do choose to stay home all the time. My inner feminist growls a little. At least we didn't sing O My Father! Hahaha. But seriously, I am fully aware that my opinions seem strange because for my whole life I always wanted to be a stay at home mom. I saw how much of a difference my own mom made by staying home full time, and how happy she was to do it for her kids, and I wanted to do that too. 

So why do I get angsty when we sing songs in church about making life a bliss complete when there's love at home? I just don't like how those songs sung on mother's day feel like an assumption, a cornering of women into the home. I think staying home as a parent should always be a specific choice, not a default or a foregone conclusion because it seems like that's what the church or God expects of women. Wow, this is sounding cranky. I'm not cranky! I just value and respect women of all career paths! I know it's weird because I AM a happy stay at home mom and fully intend to remain as such, but I just want to have a more open dialog at church rather than the confining rhetoric that often happens.

Next topic.

With Jay's permission, I have copied the original text from his mother's day church talk here, because it was better than any card or letter he could've written me. Jeff helped Jay write a few drafts of this talk, because the topic was obscure and confusing: "my mom and me." Jay said he was very very nervous, but he did a great job! He also passed the sacrament and sang a song with all of the youth and primary kids (it was a massive group of like 70 kids up there). When I pasted Jay's talk here, I added paragraph breaks for readability.

JAY'S MOTHER'S DAY TALK

I remember once when I was 3 years old I was going to see the outside of the Tri Cities temple with my mom and when we were walking down the sidewalk I felt a dullish pain in my side and I said "Mom I think I can feel the spirit" she told me that it was probably a side stitch and not the spirit I realize now that a side stitch and the spirit while felt in the same section of the body are very different this is one of the earliest direct memories of my mother talking that I have and it has kind of stuck with me for the last few years even though I have no idea why. 

The stripling warriors were built on their mothers teachings of the spirit in their youth and they became great warriors because of their incredible mothers who taught them how to recognize the spirit from such a young age. One example of the aforementioned prowess in battle is in Alma 58 verse 40 which states "But behold, they have received many wounds; nevertheless they stand fast in that liberty wherewith God has made them free; and they are strict to remember the Lord their God from day to day; yea, they do observe to keep his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments continually; and their faith is strong in the prophecies concerning that which is to come.

The Stripling Warriors are one of the most well known and beloved stories from the Book of mormon and I remember as a child looking up to them and trying to emulate them. The stripling warriors were strong in the spirit and all kept faith even against overwhelming odds fighting the lamanites they managed to secure several key victories and to have little to no losses this great legendary faith came from their years as youths and learning great faith from their mothers and despite the overwhelming odds many of them came back home to see their mothers again. 

Elder Henry B. Eyring states in his talk from this last general conference "When the storms in life come, you can be steady because you are standing on the rock of your faith in Jesus Christ. That faith will lead you to daily repentance and consistent covenant keeping.̈" While I am still learning to do that myself I know that even if the winds from the storm try to blow me off of the rock I can count on my mother to keep me steady and on the straight and narrow. 

I remember once in my life when I was at the young age of about 6 or 7 and I was home sick from school so I was looking for something to do and found a large pile of Friend magazines in a box somewhere and I started to read them and I found an excellent article about a little boy who was hesitant about reading at first but persevered and found that he could actually read the book of mormon, inspired by this article I went to my mother and told her that I would read the entire book of mormon before I was baptized she excitedly told me that I really should do it, this was a huge undertaking and I managed it but one of the main inspirations was how much my mom supported me when I made the goal because of this I have become a better person. 

All of this adds up to how mothers are an important part of the scriptural doctrine of the church and that they are a major part of God's plan of salvation and I know that without my Mom helping me through life I would not be nearly as strong in the spirit as I am now. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.   

Sniff. JAY!!!!

After dinner that night, I told the kids to do the dishes, put away food, and wipe the table with great care. "If you're wondering if you did everything that needs to be done, imagine I will charge you ten dollars for everything that isn't cleaned up and put away. Use that as your guideline," I said. Then I left to go read a book. This wasn't a mother's day thing; I usually leave for kitchen clean up on nights where I cook dinner. It's easier than hovering and doing everything myself behind the kids. Anyways, the kids did an admirable job cleaning up on Sunday night, but when I returned to the kitchen I noticed that they had not wiped the crumbs off of the kitchen table. I mourned to Jeff about how I should charge each kid $10 for that oversight, since I had specifically listed wiping the table as part of cleanup. In my mini-rant to Jeff, I concluded that it wasn't worth nagging the kids anymore and I'd just let the crumby table slide. 

Out of nowhere, Jay came into the kitchen, grabbed the spray bottle, and started spraying the table and wiping it down. He had overheard my rant and came to finish the job! I thanked him and couldn't resist trying to explain that I wasn't attempting to passive aggressively get him to wipe the table. I hope he understood that because I do not want to give my kids a complex. I tend to rant a bit when the kids act lazy and don't finish their simple jobs, and I don't want them to dread displeasing a high-strung mother! I forgave myself and accepted Jay's sweetness in wiping the table. It was a fitting finale for mother's day--an unexpected act of kitchen service from one of my own children!

Amber threw leaves into the air right when Jeff took this picture. You can see a green leaf fragment at the bottom of my hair and on Rose's armpit if you look closely. My kids seemed so tall when I put my arms around their shoulders for this picture. I love these three kids so much, and I hope I'm not too grumpy, nagging, or demanding of a mom to them. They are intensely bright lights and I feel so blessed to be their mom. [I wish we could have blocked that semi truck cab that is permanently parked in the grass next door, but oh well, we live in rural central Washington, so large machinery is almost always in the background somewhere!]

Everything is better when Jeff is home and healthy.