Unconditional love is the best gift for a new mother

For many moms, the second Sunday in May comes with a mixed bag of emotions. Mother’s Day. It seems like an impossibility. The thought that one day could center around us … now that’s a tall order.

Last year was my first Mother’s Day to celebrate as a mother myself.

I had a different reason to celebrate.

I could celebrate the day not for the mother I had but for the mother I had now become.

The morning passed. No breakfast in bed. No card waiting for me. Then came lunch. No fancy brunch. No special treat to speak of. By this point, I was fuming. All I had inside of me was screaming, “Thank me!” Asking for thanks does not have quite the same effect as when it is freely given, but I did it anyway.

Ty said he’d ordered a gift and it simply hadn’t arrived yet. Just like my husband, he had a practical and sufficient reply. No frills. No redcarpet appeal. Simply the facts and a gift that would arrive in a cardboard shipping tube a few weeks later.

This is not a knock on my husband.

I married a good man. The kind of guy everyone likes. A tender and loving dad who is absolutely adored by his daughter. Search the hashtag, #tycandoanything, and you will see my husband’s many accolades, from baking banana pudding to winning barbecue competitions. He’s as good as it gets.

My husband provides so much for our family, but I’m normally the one tending to the special occasions. I pick out Easter outfits and baskets and shop for Christmas gifts. I plan for teacher appreciation and carry meals to friends after having babies. All in all, I’m the mom and household caretaker. That means there really isn’t a day off, even if the day is meant to be celebrated in my honor.

It’s nothing to get bent out of shape about. At the end of the day, my husband had acknowledged me the best way he knew how. Did he do it my way? Absolutely not. Moms and dads are different. Differences that happen to make my husband and me a great team when we pool our talents together.

One mother on the BlogHer blogging network wrote a scathing exposé titled, “The Ugly Truth about Mother’s Day.” She lists out why “Mother’s Day sucks rotten eggs and stinky baseball cleats,” citing reasons such as the gluey mess of school-made cards her children gave her.

Ouch! To me, the day isn’t about gifts, rather it’s about appreciation. Even when it comes in the form of glittery, gluey construction paper cards made by our children. After all, aren’t Mother’s Day fails further testament to the awesome job we do as mothers each day? We steer the ship. We run the household. We make the lists and get things done.

Anna Jarvis, credited with founding the holiday in the United States in 1908, even came to regret what had become of the holiday she helped to create. What had started as a day to honor one’s mother, had become so highly commercialized that Jarvis herself considered it a Hallmark holiday.

If we’re expecting life and mommy duty to stop for one day, we’re kidding ourselves. If we’re expecting our husbands and children to execute things with the same degree of detail as us, we’re kidding ourselves there, too. The greatest thing about being a mother is that we’re always needed. No one can do what we do, the exact way we do it.

I have some great memories of time spent with my mom early in my childhood. No one did things like her. Her scrambled eggs tasted better than anyone else’s. I’ve tried to repeat their fluffy perfection at my own breakfast table and come up short of egg bliss. She made me laugh harder than anyone else. I remember every detail of how she danced and played with us. How she wasn’t afraid to be silly. How she came up with absurd songs that would make our sides split in laughter.

We were dressed perfectly for all occasions. She was the hair tamer that I would come to greatly miss later in my life. I remember watching her apply her makeup in the mornings and tease and curl her hair. I idolized her. In my book, she was an ’80s supermodel. Everything she did was dusted in magic.

My mom had her share of struggles. But for a time in my life, those precious formative years, I was blind to it all. That’s the real gift of Mother’s Day. For all we do, all the duties we perform that our families may oversight, we are gifted with unconditional love.

There’s one gift that we, as moms, can give ourselves. For one day, cut yourself some slack. The laundry can wait. The house can be less tidy. The grocery store will be open tomorrow.

Slow down. Notice how your children look at you. See yourself through their eyes. To them, you are magic. You are what they hope to be, in spite of your imperfections.

Could there ever be a greater gift than that?