Sunday, May 8, 2016

Does Your Mother Know

Happy Mother's Day Darlings!

Happy Mother's day whether you have human kids or fur babies...if you care and feed another life form you are a mom...even if you are a dad (that's for my friends who's families consist of two dads and children...because even if you are a dad, you are a mom...)

My Mother's Day gift to you is a promise to blog more...I need it...I need to exercise the crazy that is in my head the way I exercise my body on the bike and the mat.

So it's Mother's Day (let's shorten it to MD or it will take me all day to type this blog)...and I have one of two children home today and my dear mother is in heaven.  And I have 3 cats one of whom is named Dragon so I like to call myself "Khaleesi, Mother of Dragon" like the Game of Thrones character (she also has long blonde hair and trusts her animals/dragons more than most men just like me).

It's always a bittersweet day for me.

I'm so glad to be a mom.  It's all I have ever wanted to be.

Even when I was a little girl I wanted to be a mom.  When I played with my friends I was always the Mom.  My Barbies were always a mom.

I wanted to have babies and raise them...

And thanks to the generosity of my sweet Lord in heaven I am a mom to two of the most perfect and beautiful souls he has ever created.  They may not be truly perfect but in my eyes they are...and they are without a doubt beautiful.

But today also means I miss my mom...I miss her terribly...I miss her to the point of tears most of the day.

In a perfect world, where my mom was still alive, today would have gone like this:
I sleep late completely undisturbed until about 10 or so
My son cooks me breakfast and we enjoy it together
We meet my mom for lunch and take her somewhere she enjoys
We spend the rest of the day here at my house so my son can study and my Mom is with me
My daughter calls and we have a good chat
I cook dinner for my mother and we all watch Game of Thrones together
I step out of the room and she reorganizes my cabinets (she was fast) 
And my mom and I spend the day in awe of my kids and I once again have my best friend with me

Instead it has gone like this:
I got woken up by texts at 6:30 am, 7:10 am, 7:41 am , and 7:52 am...yeah...on the one day I get to sleep in 
I am still battling a terrible sinus infection so not only did I wake up well before planned but I woke up hacking and sniffling and cranky...
My son cooked me breakfast and served it to me at 10:30 (it was wonderful)
I made TCBITW (The cutest boy in the world...my son) lunch
I made bolognese sauce and the TCBITW ate 2.5 bowls of it
I took a nap (now I am less cranky)
I had a great phone chat with my daughter
I've cried off and on all day missing mom

So not a bad MD but not a great one either.

It's just one of those days that hasn't gone right in the 11 years since I lost my mom.

She taught me so much---
how to cook
how to dress
how to be a lady
to love the theater
to love movies
to go to a plastic surgeon for Botox
to be exactly who I am

ok so maybe the last two are in conflict with each other but whatever...

The only time she ever tried to really change me was, well, two things---
1) she tried to make me stay with the ex when she should have helped me leave him
and
2) she made me have some really bad haircuts

I can forgive her the first because she knew how hard it was firsthand to raise kids as a single parent.

As for the second....well, when we are reunited in Heaven she will still need to make up for the "Carol Brady" shag she forced on me and the "Dorothy Hammil" she swore would look amazing (ugh no it was literally the ugliest thing ever and the only thing that could have been worse would be "The Tootie" from Facts of Life).

Other than that my mom encouraged me to be myself...

She was my role model in so many ways---and as I age I try to do the things she did at my age so that I can age as beautifully and gracefully as she did.  I exercise, I drink water,  I spend time with my friends and I get botox...things she did.  I try my best to take care of myself. (just kidding about the Botox taking care of me...but hey it helps and I am an open book about it...)

I do the Botox because it makes me feel better and I had a tummy tuck and boob job to try and recover my body from damage.  But as for my face I'm not into plastic surgery...my mom did too much to her face...she jumped the shark on that a bit. One of the last times I saw her without makeup before she died I kept looking at her and wondering when my mom had gotten replaced by Joan Rivers.

Not kidding.

Too much
Too much

I almost called her Joan...

My mom was a beauty but one thing I learned from her and her obsession with plastic surgery and her looks was that beauty comes from the inside and if you aren't happy with yourself on the inside nothing you do on the outside will fix it.

I loved my mom with every cell in my body...I just wish she had known how truly beautiful she was.  I told her every day but somehow she didn't believe it.  She believed her worth was tied to her beauty and having a man to flatter her.  I'm glad that I am not a woman who needs that.  I do not need men posting on my social media pages that I am pretty or special---I'm waiting on that to come from just one special man who deserves me as the woman I am.  I do not need flattery---I need real love and not thinly veiled sexual innuendoes or excessive flattery.  I know women who need that, and my mom was one of them, but that's not me.  And in my mom's case it wasn't that she needed many men, she just thought she always needed a boyfriend...and funny thing when she had one she often regretted it.

My mom was a paradox...she was beautiful but thought it needed to be fixed or changed.  She wanted a boyfriend but then she liked being alone and living life as she liked.  She could look like a model for a Ralph Lauren ad but also often went out looking like an ad for Walmart.

But despite all the crazy, I miss her...

My son will graduate in less than 2 weeks and I dearly wish she was going to be next to me in the stadium to see him in his graduation gown and wearing the same mortarboard his sister wore 4 years ago.  She wanted my kids to attend the high school they attend/attended and I know she would have cried to see them both get those diplomas.  And she would be even more proud of them going to college because she never went.

And I think that she would be very proud of the mother I have become.

I'm not just mom to my own kids and fur babies...I've managed to become mom to many...

At work I have so many students that I love so very much.  One of my favorite student's mom told me recently "you just love them so much and it shows!  You may have given birth to 2 kids but your heart has many many more kids!".

That is a description I will take on my tombstone.

I love them fiercely and I cry with joy when they return to school and I love hearing from them through social media or emails or texts.  Today I had several reach out to me that way and my heart is bursting with love for each and every one of them.

I also get called "Mama Bear" at Revolution Studio where I work out.  My friend DarlingDeanna and I are Mama Jones and Mama Bear respectively.  We tend to helicopter over all our friends there and just love them to pieces.  It's a title I hold dearly and love that they bestowed it on me...

For my birthday this year my sweet friends SexySonia and JessTheBest gave me a sweatshirt that says "Mama Bear" and I dearly love it...and I love them for knowing it was the perfect thing.

I love to "mother" my friend's kids too.  One of my besties, KuteKaren, has a daughter that I am especially close to---she often calls to ask me for help on things and her mother often texts "call her" and just now I received the sweetest text from one of my other bestie's (TwirlerGirl) daughter and it made me cry...and believe it or not I loved every second of prom dress shopping with MarvelousMaggie's daughter...

loving the children of your friends is such a treat...and a privilege...

I'm glad I am the kind of woman that other's will turn to as a mom...it's the greatest compliment I get...

I learned how to be a mom from my mom...and how not to be a step-mom from my step-mother.  I won't go into her right now...too much dark there for this day but suffice it to say that should I ever be blessed to be a stepmother I want to be one that the children love and that their real mom loves me for loving them.

You don't have to give birth to a child to be it's mother...you just have to have the love in your heart for the child (or fur baby!) to do so.

Being a mom is not about DNA or giving birth...

Some of us are moms because we gave birth to our kids...some of us are moms because we adopted our kids...some of us are moms because we are two dads...some of us are moms because we love a child deeply in our hearts...and some of us are moms because a fur baby earned our love...

however you are or became a mom is not important...what is important is that other humans and animals know that they are loved and cared for by you.

So Happy Mother's Day to all of you...

I hope if you have children you got to spend time with them and show them how very loved they are and if you have a mom who is living I hope you got to see her and told her how beautiful and loved she is.  If my mom was alive I would let nothing keep me from being with her today.  I miss MD with her and my heart aches for my friends who have lost their mothers this year and are having to feel the bittersweet feeling of enjoying being a mom and missing your own.

I know this blog wasn't fun or amusing but it sure helped me get out my feelings of missing Debbie.  I wish she was hear to see my costumes and the kids perform in them (she died before I started doing it).  I wish she could read my magazine articles.  I wish she could see my daughter's art and got to watch my son wrestle and play football. I wish she could see how beautiful and smart they are and how talented they are and how God gave me kids far beyond what I deserve...

I am a mother.

It is the only title or job I want.

Except for grandmother...but I think I want to wait a while on that one...

Inspiration Song: "Does Your Mother Know" by Abba.  Because I hope your mother DOES KNOW how much she is loved and appreciated.  And if you have some issue between her and are reading this I hope you will contact her right now and tell her you love her.  Trust me as someone who does not have the luxury of having a mom around you will regret it if you don't treasure what time you have left together.

Bye darlings...Happy Mother's Day...may you be a light and love to all...it's what I aspire to every day...