Earlier this year, Points North sent out a call asking our readers to submit essays about motherhood in celebration of Mother’s Day. It seems our moms have a lot to say about life with their little ones. From humorous anecdotes to heartfelt accounts, we received many touching submissions from Atlanta and beyond – some as far as Canada found our contest online and responded! We printed a few in our May issue; read on for even more essays by and about Mom.

Porch Music

Written by Sheila S. Hudson, Athens

The rocking chair wobbles on its fragile frame. This is the third generation of babies it has cradled. Naptime for my young grandson is imminent. Jonathan rubs his eyes and fusses a bit, so I lay aside the afghan I am crocheting for his soon-to-be sibling. Jonathan’s rocking days are numbered. I know that full well. But for now, he snuggles on my shoulder. His short breaths and fluttering eyelids succumb to sleep.

The rocking chair speaks to me of good times spent in its embrace. The harmony of our hearts beat a cadence of silent symphony.

I remember time spent in the rocking chair on Granny’s screened-in front porch many summer afternoons. It was my favorite spot to read a Nancy Drew mystery or write in my diary.

Years later, my daughters would climb into my lap in the bentwood rocker giggling and wet from running through the sprinklers. Wrapped in beach towels, we read adventures from the library books we’d lugged home. No matter that the caned back occasionally threatened to dump its massive load. My two merrymakers remained oblivious.

Starlit summer evenings would find us back in the rocker. My two mischief-makers holding jelly jars filled with lightning bugs. Our bug lanterns provided ambiance for bedtime stories retold to tousled sleepyheads. And our old friend with her raspy voice embraced us all.

The same lullaby links the past to the present. She shimmies with our weight. Her bolts need tightening again. And I really should give her joints a spritz of WD-40. My procrastination has to do with what my great grandmother once said, “Rocking chairs are supposed to creak, it’s their porch music.”

Operation Baby Years – Completed

Written by Cristin Zegers, Marietta

I took two of my kids to the park the other day. I didn't pack a diaper bag or push a stroller, I just grabbed a bag of goldfish, a bottle of water, and my book and off we went. The fenced-in play zone was full toddlers and preschoolers, running, exploring, challenging themselves on rope ladders with the secure hovering hand of Mom close behind them in case they had taken on too much.

I plopped myself on the ground and savored the quiet time while my kids wandered around and took it all in. It has been a while since we've gone to the park. With three kids three years apart, the park was always very challenging for me. Now, a couple of years later, I was finally one of those moms who could savor some "me time" and not continually dart visually from left to right counting the heads of her children.

By the swings I caught a conversation between moms about how different the park is now that their child is walking, interrupted by warnings of walking in front of the swings and the dangers of eating bark. I'll admit I don't miss those conversations. I'm all done comparing notes on developmental milestones, teething and mysterious rashes. It is so important to be around other moms that are at the same stage as you when you have little ones. I was there for many, many years.

My two were climbing up the slide, practicing gymnastics moves on the bars, and watching these little people with wonder. When had we stopped living in this world of pull-ups and velcro shoes? It looked a little foreign to my kids, and frankly, I felt a little bit of the same. When you're raising kids, you can't really declare yourself officially done with one phase and on to the next. The borders are blurred. We're all in Elementary school now, but we're still in booster seats, I'm still brushing their teeth for them, and a snuggle from Mommy can still make a bonk on the head feel better. If I could look into the future a few years, I'll bet I'll be nostalgic for these days.

I watched as my son helped a little boy on the final steps of his climb. The little boy turned to my 6-year old and said, "thank you, sir" and ran away to continue his adventure. I found this to be hilarious, and I could tell my little guy felt like a pretty big kid at that moment. He still occasionally wets the bed and has a meltdown about once a day, but to the current regulars at the playground, he's what they're all working hard to become. And with that, I will declare myself officially done with the baby years, and proud to have made it through with three little role models for the current regulars at the playground.

My Mother’s Day Gifts

Written by Rona Simmons, Cumming

I realize now the best and the most enduring Mother’s Day gifts are not those sweaters or perfumes I purchased in frantic, last-minute trips to the mall or bouquets of flowers I ordered over the phone, but rather, those my mother gave to me.

She had the “gift of gab” we used to say or, borrowing another familiar refrain, she could “sell ice to Eskimos.” In her years running a successful small business she trusted in that skill. To some degree, each of my siblings and I inherited this talent. It helped us through our adolescence – filled with years of uprooting our household to move to a new city – allowing us to make new friends more quickly than others might. It perhaps enhanced my own career, giving me the self-confidence needed to succeed in a position in executive management.

She had what seemed to be an innate sense of beauty and filled our home with original artworks. In her final years, the memory of her childhood became more vivid – though we knew they were slightly or maybe even severely exaggerated. One in particular she told repeatedly with new embellishments each time. In her account, she had found a set of oil paints and painted a flower on her mother’s kitchen wall, infuriating her mother but garnering praise from her father. True or not, she claimed it launched her lifelong pursuit of the arts, eventually becoming an interior designer and passing the appreciation for drawing and painting on to us.

We grew up firmly rooted in the middle class, but my Mother insisted that we be exposed to cultural experiences outside our world. Some of our formative years were spent in Europe thanks to my father’s military career, and she insisted that we gain appreciation for our unfamiliar surroundings. We went to local schools, requiring that we learn a foreign language and were encouraged to develop friends with the neighborhood Portuguese children, not just those of other American military families. We were wowed when she participated in a military wives’ runway show of Parisian fashions – I think I remember her dieting for weeks ahead of time to look her best. And, on that spring day, she was truly radiant.

After her death two years ago, I gathered from my Mother’s personal effects a few gifts that I had given to her on earlier Mother’s Days. A pink sweater, pink being one of her favorite colors long before pink was fashionable. A barely used tube of designer lipstick. A framed water color of a solitary rose I had painted for her, in pink, of course.

These are precious mementos, but eventually they will be put away in a back room, sold, traded or simply discarded. My respect and appreciation for the world around me, my own business sense, and my own love of the arts – these are the gifts that will endure. These are my Mother’s Day gifts.

The Good Moms

Written by Tamara Herchel, Gainesville, Fla.

I am one of the good moms.

There, I said it. The fact that I can say this at all is tremendous self-awareness on my part. There are a million other moms out there, changing a diaper, wiping a nose, kissing a boo-boo, perhaps, who are wonderful, talented, loving women suffering from the internal, eternal conflict – balancing their mommy perfectionism with the need to wash their hair. These women question the truth of this statement, not as it applies to me, but as it applies to themselves. But they, too, are the good moms.

Many jobs allot one year for a new employee to become proficient in their new role, and that is with a myriad of resources available to them at their fingertips – policies and procedures, how-to manuals and such. There’s a job description to adhere to and goals with which to measure success.

However, in my new job as mama to one perfect, miraculous baby girl, I have no job description, no manual … and no time-allotted learning curve. I fail as many times, if not more so, than I succeed. Some days, my daughter sleeps 7 hours, sometimes she’s up every 45 minutes. Sometimes I manage to blow-dry my hair before work; sometimes I sport a ponytail for 3 days straight. I feel bad that I’ve neglected my dogs, gazing at me longingly while I nurse the baby. I regret the fact that, on Valentine’s Day, my husband took me dancing and I fell asleep mid-twirl. I wish that I had a chance to iron my work pants every now and then. I wish I could erase all the days I’ve sat in my office and cried over spilled milk.

We good moms mourn the loss of each fleeting moment as we watch our infants grow and learn. We celebrate their triumphs, anticipate their milestones, and struggle to document each memory so that we can share them with our children as they get older. We blow raspberries on our baby’s tummies during diaper changes, even as we look forward to the day when they’ll pee-pee in the potty. We know we should go to sleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow at night, and yet, we can’t stop marveling at our sleeping babies on our video monitors.

I’m a good mom because my heart aches with love for her, and because knowing I’m her first teacher, her primary role model, is bringing out wonderful qualities in me like patience and kindness and empathy. Because being her mama has made me want to be my very best self, not just for her but for both of us. Yes, I will mess up. The occasional swear word will pass my lips before I say "earmuffs," I'll probably give her chicken nuggets, let her stay up past bedtime, and watch cartoons on days when she should be outside soaking up sunshine ... But overall, I’m definitely a good mom.

Photo courtesy of www.manicmotherphotography.com

Letter to my Daughter

Written by Naomi Wittlin, Missouri City, Texas

You are innocence. Imagination. Authenticity. You are my best self. Pure. Unedited.

I watch you in an ordinary moment – you are sorting buttons, utterly absorbed in their textures and colors as you count them and rearrange them. Your wispy hair reflects golden sunshine streaming from the window behind you. Your eyes are focused and intent. You are absolutely beautiful, so much so that I could cry.

I can’t imagine anything you could ever do that would cause me to ever love you less than I do now. You have my heart always. I believe in you. I’m excited to see who you are at 5, at 20, at ages I haven’t even reached yet; as a student, as a wife, as a mother; as you grow and find your voice, trust in yourself, overcome obstacles, and cultivate hopefulness in yourself and those around you.

You are vulnerable to the future, as we all are, to all those you haven’t yet met, to all the stories you haven’t yet heard that will shape you, to the places yet unseen. I hold that vulnerability as a well within myself for you, since you do not yet know it’s there. And there will be joy, immeasurable, I hope. I wish I could hold you in this moment forever, yet it is already gone.

I hope we are teaching you compassion, a sense of connection to others, courage. I hope you feel that you belong, that you are surrounded by love.

Love, Mommy

Embracing the M

Written by Kathi Finch, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

When the laser beam of diarrhea shot out of my daughter, I knew I had crossed some sort of Rubicon. This was it. Somehow, in that single, feces-soaked instant, I realized that this moment would define me as a parent. No, not just a parent – a Mom.

I guess I hadn’t fully understood just how much I had changed in the 18 months since her arrival. I’d taken so much in stride. The fluids, the smells, the icky tactile tasks motherhood had demanded of me - in my sleep-starved, just-trying to-hold-it-together state, I had absorbed what my life had become without batting an eye.

But this was a Moment, and it hit me, as the brown splatter dripped down the wall, that I was really a Mom.  Capital-M-Mom.

I’d weathered a lot since the June morning when she made her debut. Wondering how I’d ever get her to sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time. Hanging on to the slippery little bugger in the bath. Sweating over every switch: breastmilk to formula, formula to baby food, baby food to table food. The first day of daycare, and the first day at the new daycare. The 7 ear infections in 8 months. The bout of pneumonia. 

And for every anxiety-inducing, second-guessing instance, there were the awesome, it’s-so-worth-it moments. Her first smile. Singing her to sleep in the rocking chair. That first gravity-defying step. The way she could look straight into the heart of me with her steady, strong gaze. Realizing I would do anything to make her laugh.

I had told myself that I would be different. I wouldn’t let time slip away from me. I would hold onto each moment, each change, with a fierce remembrance. I would mark the occasions and record the transformations. Instead, like so many parents, I got caught up in the mundane stuff and lost track of the subtle shifts. It was tough enough getting through each day. I had little time or energy for self-awareness.

Thankfully, epiphanies can come when and how you least expect them. Here I was, faced with a crying toddler, in the middle of one of the grossest messes I’d ever seen, and I realized with a calm clarity that no one was going to come to my rescue. It was up to me to fix it: to clean up, comfort my child, and keep myself under control. To be a Mom.

In that moment, I understood just how far I’d come.  The old me would never, in a million years, have thought I would ever be here. And yet here I was, (surprisingly) cool as a cucumber, and so incredibly grateful for the blossoming of those maternal instincts I once doubted even existed. And I knew, with unshakable certainty, that my diarrhea-spraying, frustrating, exhausting, hilarious, brilliant, wonderful, amazing daughter was the best part of my life. I would handle this moment, and others just like it, because I am a Mom.

Guilt, Happiness & Peanut Butter on Celery

Written by Jane Swinglehurst, Vancouver, Canada

“Mummy, can I run around the tree.”

My 3-year-old son Tanner grins, lets out a high pitched squeal and starts doing laps around the tree outside his preschool. Within minutes, half a dozen preschoolers are laughing, jumping and running in circles. Oh to be that happy. For life to be that easy.

I let out a big sigh. The 45 minutes leading up to this drop off have been spent force feeding my son toast then pushing him down the hallway, squirting water at his head trying to get his hair combed, faced washed and teeth brushed so that my son isn’t “that kid” the other parents talk about. Through this whole routine, Tanner drags his feet, clamps his jaw shut and scowls at me. He can hear his younger brother playing in the next room and he wants to join him. He doesn’t care what he looks like, only I do.

I bark at him “Tanner, we’re late. Come on, come on!” I tap my foot anxiously. I want to yell. Yelling would feel good, but only for that second, then the guilt would settle in. Tanner looks in the mirror and points to a scratch over his eye.

“Mummy why am I red on the inside?” Deep breathe; I don’t have time to explain anatomy.

“Get your shoes and jacket we gotta go.” He spots a toy car on his way to the door and stoops to play.

“No, Tanner, shoes, jacket, now!” I feel my temperature rising and in my head I’m already making up excuses for why I’m late for work again.

“You’re going to be late for school and I’m going to be late for work, let’s move!” He’s still on his hands and knees making vroom vroom sounds pushing the car up the baseboards.

“Seriously buddy, we’ve got to go!” I must be yelling now because Tanner yells back at me.

“OK!”

I’ve become a mother who yells. Packed in the car and off we go. We arrive as most of the other kids do, 5 minutes late. He runs off in front of me, so happy. The morning struggle forgotten and as I watch him, I can’t understand why a few minutes ago I was yelling at him.

Happiness is so simple to him. It’s running in circles. It’s a hug from his Dad. It’s peanut butter and celery for dinner. My 3 year old has got it right – happiness is not complicated. I won’t really lose my job for being a few minutes late and Tanner isn’t going to have fewer friends because his hair is a mess. Happiness is not being in a rush. It’s a hug from my sons. It’s holding hands as we walk up to school together. Happiness is not yelling. Happiness is not complicated.