Unconventional Mother's Day

Unconventional Mother’s Day

By Jody Worsham’

All rights reserved for a long lasting memory

While most traditional Moms are receiving breakfast in bed, roses, gifts of perfume, or long distance calls from far flung offspring on this Mother’s Day, I remain the unconventional mom.  I mean what else would you expect when you are both grandmother and mother to two of your children who are also the siblings to your other daughter.  So would you expect my Mother’s Day to be any different?

For a week the children had been secretly hauling crafts and cardstock to the upstairs sewing room with continuous admonitions not to come upstairs.  Backpacks came home from school Friday with bulging pockets along with warnings of “Don’t look inside!”

“I hope you like cards,” leaked the seven-year-old who was quickly bopped on the head by the ten-teen resulting in WW III for which I had to negotiate peace treaties beginning with “I don’t know what this is about,  so stop fighting.”

Today is Mother’s Day; I was awakened not with breakfast in bed, roses, perfume nor the aforementioned secret avalanche of cards, but with “What’s for breakfast.  I’m hungry.”  The bulge that I am not supposed to know about is still bulging in the backpacks with no indication that they will remember them  before the day is over.  I just hope it is not something alive, perishable, or made from cheese.

The children did call me out to the backyard a few minutes ago.  “We want to show you something.”  Ah ha, my big Mother’s Day Surprise.  The ten-teen hollered from the trampoline “Watch this!” like I haven’t heard that command a million times.  “I’m going to do what you taught me.”  She proceeded to do forward and backward flips in the air while the seven-year-old ran around the outside of the trampoline singing a medley from “The Nutcracker” and “Hail to the Chief.”

Ok, while it wasn’t what I expected; sometimes the unexpected brings the most joy.  Who wouldn’t be pleased that a child listened and put into practice what you said, even if it was forward and backward flips, and a child singing from the classics and hinting that I would one day be known as the mother of the President of the United States?

Happy Mother’s Day to all Moms, specially the unconventional ones.