Beyond Expectation

I’d just hung up the phone from talking for a very long time with our son who lives in Mexico.  He’d called to wish me Happy Mother’s Day.

“We have some good kids,” my husband said from the recliner as he shuffled electronic cards on the computer in a game of solitaire.

“Really great kids,” I murmured.  A knot of emotion rose in my throat, blocking further words.

It has been an unusually special Mother’s Day for me.  If my husband and our four children had gotten together in a pow-wow and planned an approach (you get flowers, you call on the phone, you send a card, you post something on facebook, you buy a gift, you orchestrate her day with meaningful activity, etc.)  it couldn’t have been more thorough.  But they didn’t plan ahead.  Each one simply reached out to me in his or her own way, and the cumulative effect was astounding: humbling, edifying, enabling.  I can’t think of enough adjectives.

Sometimes when I look at myself in the mirror - a face well marked with years - I wonder how my children see me deep-down. Do they recognize the depth of longing, devotion, admiration, and hope that still compels this old bag of bones to love them fiercely, chronically, sometimes compulsively?  Do they understand such crazy mother-love can never die, but instead will live on through them after I’m gone? 

I can only muse and marvel, and be grateful for a Mother’s Day that proves they love me back.