Before And After Motherhood

  Before I had children, this is what I envisioned it would be like.  The perfectly behaved children, neat and clean, and my hair and make-up always done (not just when I went out of the house), and my children fascinated by what I was reading them. Oh, and don't forget the lake house and perfect summer weather.


After I had children, more often than not it looked more like this...


But to be completely honest, reality- motherhood falls somewhere in between these extremes--most of the time.

The title of this post is a bit misleading because once you become a mother, you don't ever stop being a mother, so there is no AFTER motherhood. When my children were infants, I couldn't wait until they could sleep through the night. When they were teenagers, I wished they wouldn't stay out so late because I worried if they'd make it home safely, and couldn't they just be little again? Little children, little problems. Big children (well, you know the rest).

When they were babies, I couldn't wait until I didn't have to nurse anymore. When they were older, I'd wish they still would want to cuddle and depend on me completely. Couldn't wait until they could walk and talk, then when they did I was exhausted from chasing them around all day, keeping them out of harm's way and answering all the constant "why's" and "Mom's".

My sister-in-law, who came from a family of five, said her mother got so tired of constantly hearing whiney "Mom!!!" that she told them half-seriously that she was going to change her name to a swear word and beat them for saying it. And she was a Christian woman!

So for any of you wanna-be moms out there, pictures don't tell the whole story. We all would like to think that the first picture (above) is the quintessential picture of motherhood. And the precious mother in the second picture, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, is how we should all look at one another. We all have our share of heartaches, some maybe more than others, but we can all just stop comparing ourselves with one another.

The AFTER motherhood, if we are so blessed, is called GRANDmotherhood. And. It. Is.

Lost MacGyver Episode

Today one of my daughters and I spent a good deal of time and effort transplanting some perennials we got from a dear sweet little Christian lady who was "downsizing" her vast collection of plant materials.  I envisioned beautiful purple coneflowers, hostas, and Gloriosa daisies amid drifts of forget-me-nots gracing our work-in-progress:  A landscape job complete with stone walkway and rock garden leading to the entrance of our screen porch.  Now, this has truly been a unified effort of blood, sweat, and tears, not only by myself, but my four strong and helpful offspring and two "hired hands" (that's another good story for later).  The project has been evolving over the past several years, and now it's beginning to actually LOOK like something.

So after going out to the clothesline to take down a few loads, the cats were acting and looking a little like Ethiopian refugees in need of a good meal.  "Here kitty, kitty!", and in no time, their poor famished selves are rewarded with dishes of kitty-kibbles.  After I go back inside with the loads of clothes, I turn back to see the cats are walking away from the shop area where I just fed them.  I think to myself, "How can they have eaten that so quickly?", so I investigate only to find the culprit:  Jed!  "Bad dog!!!", and Jed hunkers down to show his guilt.  I have pity on him and tie him up and give him his dinner AWAY from the poor starving Ethiopian cats.  I grumble to myself about all the critters around here that have no manners, and then I get an idea!

I had just minutes before walked into the shop and heard a distinct "beep, beep, beep, beep, beep!", then glanced over to what Paulie, the OTHER Macgyver, was making.  He had some contraption going off that  reminded me of some time-bomb or something, with it's flashing red lights, controls, and that alarm going off.  While I'm pretty sure it ISN"T a time-bomb, I think to myself, "I ought to get Paulie to build me some kind of critter alarm."  Soon after leaving the shop area and making my way back to the house, my thought was confirmed.  "@#$%^& CHICKENS!!!!!"  Blasted things scratched up my beautiful coneflowers, leaving their roots exposed to the air for who-knows-how-long!  That's it, I've decided.  The perfect plot for MacGyver--mastermind a scheme for all these conniving animals, and teach them a lesson once and for all!  "Paulie, while you're at it, what do you think about creating a robot to police all these animals-behaving-badly???"  So everyone, if there's ever a revival of the Lost Episodes of MacGyver, be on the look-out for this exciting chapter, or maybe you'll see the "Animal Police Robot" on some late-night informercial....stranger things HAVE happened!