At the conclusion of another Mother’s Day, I have a few thoughts….
I miss my mother, she’s been gone for 25 years now. She was a fun-loving, no-nonsense, great mom to have when I was a kid. To those people who still have their mothers -APPRECIATE them!
I love my kids, who are now twenty (soon to be 21) and twenty-five. They were great kids growing up (most of the time-hah!), did fantastic in school and are just really nice human beings. What’s interesting to me is this: I was NOT going to have children. As a young woman, I loved my life as it was and had no desire to change it. My “plate” was full with a fantastic husband, family, many friends, a great job, and continual joy in all! I had no “biological time clock” that was ticking or anything remotely like it. I thoroughly believed I was not going to have kids and I was happy with that decision. I went through my twenties and up to my 31st year of life and something happened that turned the earth on it’s axis. I unexpectedly and shockingly became pregnant. OMG! I had spent years and years avoiding just that. How did this happen? OMG!!!
I became a mother just two weeks shy of turning 32. I LOVED my little baby. She changed mine and my husband’s life totally. I loved holding her and feeding her. She was a sweet baby that turned into a sweet child. Well, we couldn’t let her go through life being an only child as we both came from large families (I’m the middle child of five kids, my husband is the youngest of eight). When she was nearly four years old, we thought O.K., let’s have another. This time – on purpose! We had fun making that happen. We had never done that before, TRY to become pregnant! It was always the opposite – NOT to become pregnant. Weird…
When I was 36, I became a mom for the second time. Wow, two kids now. A lot more work. A lot more joy. They grew older and occasionally would have nasty fights, as most siblings do. I always remembered my father telling me “When you have one kid, you become parents. When you have two, you become a referee.” It’s true. So, I became a very busy mom. Working, child care issues, school assemblies, being a “band mom” for four years for one child, going to volleyball games for seven years for the other child, all of those things and more. Living 25 miles out of town didn’t make it any easier. When I turned 45, I had a 9 year old child and a 13 year old child. I never, in a million years, thought that’s where I would be at that age. WOW.
Now that my kids are young adults, I cannot perceive my life any other way. We are a tight family of four to this day. I sometimes still can’t believe I gave birth to two children. Every Mother’s Day, I’m reminded of how LUCKY I am…
Chris Calaba
AV Art and Framing - Graphic Experience 