On Being a Mother

Today is my first official Mother's Day as a mother so I have been reflecting again on motherhood and how much it has changed me. For years, my brothers and sisters and I have been honoring our own mom on this day of the year, first with homemade construction paper cards and "gifts" of wrapped-up items we found around the house, later with cards and gift certificates to spas and dinners. This morning, as I came out of my room and saw a dozen roses and a card that Adam and Charlotte had for me waiting on the counter, I felt more like my mother than I ever had before.

Of course, this feeling has been coming on for a long time. Almost nine months ago, little Charlotte Lily came to live with me and displaced me from the center of my own life. This is the first year that I truly understand something of the sacrifices that my own mother has made for me, of all of the love and concern and anxiety and joy that she has taken away from herself and given to me so that I might have those things within me to give to my own children. I am so profoundly grateful today for my mother who has given me the ability to be a good mother to my daughter, for my grandmother who did the same for my mother, and for all of the past generations of women of my family who have passed down this sacred legacy of self-sacrifice and love. I hope that I will be able to pass this onto my Charlotte. I already look forward to the day when she will hold her own baby and look at me for the first time with the same eyes of this understanding.

I am also grateful today to have married a man who is the product of a similar heritage. The love and concern of my mother-in-law is apparent in the kind of father Adam is to our daughter and the husband that he is to me. His sensitivity, his patience, and his willingness to make sacrifices for me and for our family are clear reflections of the woman who raised him and I thank her as well for helping to make him who he is today.

We love you all very much, Moms, and hope you have a wonderful day. As a mom, I can now say with all confidence that you deserve to be recognized for all you do for at least a little while every year!

(The picture on the left is my mother and I, two days old, in May 1976 in front of the St. George LDS Temple. The one on the right is of me and Charlotte, 12 days old, in front of the Raleigh LDS Temple in August 2008.)