Happy Mother's Day!

This Mother's Day, I ask you to give a mom a break. As a mom, I now understand so much more about life, and about why moms look and act the way they do.

For instance, if you are expecting a mom to meet you somewhere at a given time, understand that she could be late for any number of reasons. She could have been up late the night before, wondering when her husband was going to get home, hoping to talk to him after several days of limited contact due to his job (and hers). She could have decided to sleep just a few minutes longer, since the kids were still quiet, although she knew that she would be pushing it later if she wanted to arrive to her destination on time. She could have decided (dammit) that she was going to take a shower even though they had to leave in 15 minutes, put the eldest child in the pack 'n play that was still set up in her bedroom from last weekend, set the youngest child in the bouncy chair and hurriedly washed her hair. She probably frantically combed through her dripping locks, scowled at the 200 hairs that came out in the comb and wondered when this post-pregnancy annoyance would end.

Then she'd pick up the eldest child and smell something funny, just as they were supposed to be putting shoes on and getting into the car. After a record-fast diaper change, she might have put the eldest child on a kitchen chair to help her put her shoes on, not noticing the (full) coffee cup that she had left there from breakfast. That eldest child might then have grabbed the coffee mug and dumped it onto the floor, soaking her mother's shorts and coating the floor, table and chairs with sticky coffee. Perhaps at that point the mother would question her sanity and wonder how their "vacation" to Mexico that weekend was going to go. That, of course, would put her into a slight panic when she realized that she had not yet even begun to pack, that she still needed to sort out the childrens' sleeping arrangements whilst on vacation, and that she was now quite late for her appointment.