Mother's and Daughters: Thoughts for Mother's Day
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Mother's Day is just around the corner. It's one of my favorite days. My daughter always makes me feel very special and does a great job celebrating me.
On the holiday, Isabella has made me a nice breakfast on her own for the past four years. She's an inspiring daughter, and at thirteen is more than capable of making breakfast,. I loved it when a few years back she asked me to close my eyes, come into the kitchen, and turn the oven on for her. Or when she was five and made me a grilled cheese sandwich in the microwave, because she was not old enough to use the oven. I cherish her Mother's Day breakfasts and can't wait to see what she has on offer this year.
The extra-special part for me is that this is our day together to just be mother and daughter. I am a single parent, so whenever Isabella is at my house, it is just the two of us. But Mother's Day is a day when we put aside all our day-to-day madness, bickering and chores and enjoy each other.
I always knew I'd have at least one child. I love kids and babies. They make me feel happy and secure and I know how to communicate with them on their own level. Kids and babies are just small people, and I tend to treat them as equals to adults. They are smart, funny, insightful and loving. This is why I became a mother.
And I'm very glad I did. I love being a mother enjoying my child and treating her with patience and understanding, regaling her with silliness and offering unbridled love. As Isabella gets older, I have to adjust the way I use these traits, but they are all still necessary. Patience is way at the top of the list these days, so is silliness (however, not in front of her friends, thank you very much). I find that with every passing year, we come to an understanding of how we relate and move into these new roles, sometimes with ease, sometimes not.
Gran Fran (my very own mother) and I are not always on the same page, but we talk or IM almost every day. We collaborate on food projects and discuss ideas for upcoming work that we're doing. There is bickering and eye rolling a-plenty, but I will say that we are as bonded as ever. Though we live on opposite coasts, we are incredibly close.
We may not always see eye-to-eye on everything, but Gran Fran does have good advice on many of the stagesIsabella is going through. Having raised five kids, four of them girls, Gran Fran and Joe have seen it all. If Isabella and I start bickering when we are with Gran Fran, she helps defuse the situation by gently (which for Gran Fran means yelling instructions at top voice) reminding me that I was no cakewalk at thirteen and to give the kid a break.
From my echo (Isabella) my shadown (Gran Fran and me, here's to Mother's Day and all of the fabulous moms out there. May your kids treat you well more often than not and celebrate you always!
You can find recipes for my first installment of Mother's Day here.
