there are no words.
For some things, there are no words. Which is to say, words just don’t do them justice. How could they?
My mother once took my sister and about a dozen of her pre-teen friends to a miniature golf course. Forget the mini golf for a minute and imagine that minivan ride. She once took a few of my friends to a school field trip destination and had to listen to us belting out a Pointer Sisters song, at the top of our pitchy voices, over and over again. To this day, I bet she still feels that misery hearing the words, “I’m so excited”. But I digress.
Mini golf.
It was my sister’s birthday and my mother, despite raising two girls (with all the lovely challenges that included), was nothing if not eternal mother of the year. Seriously, when I think back on it, she should have a wall of trophies. She loaded up this group of girls, drove them to a park full of mini windmills, flamboyant dragons, and bridges over tiny waterways. You know, the kind of place that is the overall size of a big parking lot, but takes seemingly endless hours to walk through? Especially with a group of overly squeeling, sugar-fueled girls.
As I’m writing this, I’m realizing there are so many similarities between that and a coffee infused trip to Costco as an adult. Huh.
I can’t remember how many trap-door-ending plastic turf paths she walked this group of girls through, chasing rogue balls and waiting for repeated tries to beat the windmill blades. However, golf was cut short. The thing about being young is, you sometimes have a dangerous combination of ambitious ideas and being totally unaware of your surroundings. That day, it resulted in one girl taking a PGA worthy backswing… right into my Mother’s nose.
I’ve heard my mother say, on more than one occasion, that no good deed goes unpunished. Life happens, and sometimes it hurts. Over the course of our lives, we all try to give so much for those we care about. But a mother’s love? That’s beyond measure. This probably crazy, but never failing to give us an amazing childhood woman, continues to go above and beyond. Year after year, memory after memory, purple heart deserving parenting. Persevering through all the turmoiled periods of raising us and helping us turn into (mostly functional) full grown people.
It's true. How incredibly fortunate are we that a mother’s love is greater than the pain of broken body parts? There aren’t many loves in life that stand by you through your absolute worst, forsaking sleep and worrying endlessly from birth to youthful indiscretions through trying to navigate adulthood. No matter how many scars the journey and effort brings, none of us would be everything we are without it.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never noticed a single scar on my Mom. In my view they never stood out. But everyday I look at a picture of her and I doing dishes, when I had to stand on a step stool to reach the sink, and remember the endless good memories. The incredible things she did, and does, in caring. And I think about how lucky I am. This woman loves us so much, she would probably still ride in a car with me shrieking, “I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it”. The great part of being raised by a mother who is always caring is, it sticks. So, I probably won’t.
Probably.
Happy Mother’s Day week to all the great moms out there. We would be recklessly throwing golf clubs through our lives without you, and we love you for being the always good in our course.
