Sunday, May 09, 2010

I've got a good mother...

Growing up being raised by a superhero isn't too bad.  But because my mom didn't wear her underwear outside her pants and have a cape flowing in the wind I didn't realize she was one until recently.

I remember as a kid that my mom knew just about everything and could do anything.  She was the fastest typer in the West and she could sing harmony to any song (even Radiohead's "High and Dry" as I discovered in high school).  I didn't mind that she was a lunch monitor at my elementary school because she was the "nice" one...I was so proud.

She could do it all.  Sew my clothes (jeans or jogging pants...depending on the phase I was in), cut my hair (I had some pretty short bangs), and cook my favourite meals that I would eat until I felt I was going to burst.  She made the best school lunches that made all the other kids jealous...especially in university!  She would sing songs, read books, and pray with us at bedtime, even though I was a notorious "staller".  She came to all my baseball and soccer games even though the tension of competition  probably gave her an ulcer.  And it wasn't all Suzy Homemaker, my mom could make a camp fire, chop wood, and fearlessly kill spiders.  She was the first one up and the last one to bed...probably because that's the only time she could have peace and quiet.  And she was always inhumanly chipper in the morning...at least compared to me.

As I got older there was a time when I thought I probably knew more than she did, especially in terms of what I should and shouldn't be able to do.  Oh, how foolish.

When I started drinking coffee I was bound and determined to drink it black because that's how my mom did.

And then when I moved away across the world or across the country I realized that I had been raised by a superhero all along.  And that doing all the things that she had made look easy really weren't.  Like getting stains out of clothes.  Only she could get the stain out my t-shirt that I brought home at Christmas. 

Patience, sacrifice and faith.  These are the words that best describe my mom...along with gullible, but that's not important right now.  I don't know if I've ever met anyone who has displayed such disciplined patience...and we put her through her paces! Through the years she has continually sacrificed to make us happy, displayed in the most insignificant moments such as always taking the smallest piece or the one that didn't turn out right at the dinner table.  Or organizing and prepping our family camping trips even though it was a ridiculous amount of work.  And she has always been a model of faith, praying tirelessly for her children.

In the book of Proverbs it paints an idealistic, seemly unattainable, picture of a wife and mother.  And at the end is says that her children will call her 'blessed'.  Well I have a blessed mother.  They say as we grow older we turn into our parents...maybe that's not so bad after all.