Today, I stand in the kitchen surrounded by sugar cookies. They're out of the oven, half-iced, and cooked unevenly because I'm still learning to roll dough correctly (after 29 years!)
All of the baking and rolling and icing makes me think of my mom. It's too true that we don't fully appreciate our own moms until we ourselves are moms.
My mom used to make sugar cookies at every major holiday: Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's, Easter... she'd bake them and then let us help ice them and add the eyes and decorations as we saw fit. When I was a kid, it looked like this:
(Skipping in from careless play)
Mom: I have cookies, you want to ice them?
Me: Yes!
I never realized that "I have cookies" meant she'd spent the last 2-4 hours mixing, rolling, cleaning... I never stopped to think that she had a million other things going on. It was just cookie day. Man, I love that lady.
This got me thinking about other things. Like the fact that if I brought home 1 or 14 friends, she'd order pizza for us or hand out candy bars like a vending machine or have fresh baked brownies. Like the fact that I had more experiences in my youth than most people have their whole lives. Like the fact that she constantly had a new art project, a new science experiment, or a new pet for us to use as we learned through play. And she did it all for us, all without ever having anyone fully realize the depth of love and effort she was pouring into us, every single day.
I take being a mom more seriously than any other job I've ever had. I love it, I throw myself into it. If only I can give my girls what my mom gave me.
Today, I appreciate my mom.
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