Belated Mother's Day Hat Trick

These three readings were included in the Mother's Day service at church on Sunday.  I was touched by all of them and wanted to share them with you.  I include the originally writers and sources where I could find them.

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This is for all the mothers who didn't win Mother of the Year in [2009].

All the runners-up and all the wannabes. The mothers too tired to enter or too busy to bother.

This is for all the mothers who froze their buns on metal bleachers at soccer games Friday night instead of watching from cars, so that when their kids asked, "Did you see my goal?" they could say "Of course, wouldn't have missed it for the world," and mean it.

This is for all the mothers who have sat up all night with sick toddlers in their arms, wiping up barf laced with Oscar Mayer wieners and cherry Kool-Aid saying, "It's OK, honey, Mommy's here."

This is for all the mothers of Kosovo who fled in the night and can't find their children.

This is for the mothers who gave birth to babies they'll never see. And the mothers who took those babies and made them homes.

For all the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes.

And all the mothers who don't.

What makes a good mother anyway? Is it patience? Compassion? Broad hips?

The ability to nurse a baby, fry a chicken and sew a button on a shirt all at the same time?

Or is it heart?

Is it the ache you feel when you watch your son disappear down the street, walking to school alone for the very first time?

The jolt that takes you from sleep to dread, from bed to crib at 2 a.m. to put your hand on the back of a sleeping baby?

The need to flee from wherever you are and hug your child when you hear news of a school shooting, a fire, a car accident, a baby dying?

I think so.

So, this is for all the mothers who sat down with their children and explained all about making babies. And for all the mothers who wanted to but just couldn't.

This is for reading "Goodnight Moon" twice a night for a year. And then reading it again. "Just one more time."

This is for all the mothers who mess up. Who yell at their kids in the grocery store and swat them in despair and stomp their feet like a tired 2-year-old who wants ice cream before dinner.

This is for all the mothers who taught their daughters to tie their shoes before they started preschool.

And for all the mothers who chose Velcro instead.

For all the mothers who bite their lips -- sometimes until they bleed -- when their 14-year-olds dye their hair green. Who lock themselves in the bathroom when babies keep crying and won't stop.

This is for mothers who show up at work with spit-up in their hair and milk stains on their blouses and diapers in their purses.

This is for all the mothers who teach their sons to cook and their daughters to sink a jump shot.

This is for all the mothers whose heads turn automatically when a little voice calls "Mom?" in a crowd, even though they know their own offspring are at home.

This is for mothers who put pinwheels and Teddy bears on their children's graves.

This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, who can't find the words to reach them.

This is for all the mothers who sent their sons to school with stomachaches, assuring them they'd be just fine once they got there, only to get calls from the school nurses an hour later asking them to please pick them up. Right away.

This is for young mothers stumbling through diaper changes and sleep deprivation. And mature mothers learning to let go. For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers. Single mothers and married mothers. Mothers with money, mothers without.

This is for you all. So hang in there.

And better luck next year, I'll be rooting for you.

Originally published by Cindy Lange-Kubick in the Lincoln Journal-Star, April 11, 1999.
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When I came drenched in the rain, 
My brother told why dont you take an umbrella with you. 
My sister said why not you waited till it stopped. 
My Dad angrily said only after getting cold, you will realize. 
But my MOTHER, 
as she was drying my hair with her saree, 
was shouting 
not at me

…………………….. But at the RAIN.

from a poem originally written in Tamil (found here)

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I offer a prayer for mother’s day today.

This is who it is for:

It is for all the mothers in this room, in this city, across this continent, and in every land around this planet.

It is for the mothers whose homes resound with children’s laughter, screeching toys, loud music, or the sullen teenage shrug.

It is for the mothers who gave birth in joy or in agony or in grief.

It is for the mothers who have adopted the motherless and discovered how wide love can reach; and it is for the mothers who have given over their children to others.

This prayer is for all the women who have wished to be mothers and are not.

It is for all the mothers whose children have ever gone off to war, for the worry they endure and the tension they carry through every hour of absence. It is for the mothers whose children return whole and unscathed, or who return wounded in mind or body, or who do not return at all.

It is for all the mothers who grieve – lost pregnancies, lost children, lost hopes, lost futures.

And this is my prayer:

May peace come to you.

Peace amid the noise and chaos of active children

Peace amid the silence and the absence.

Peace with the choices you have made, the paths taken and the ones not taken.

Peace with the grief you have endured.

May peace come to you, and may you greet it and welcome it, and make a place for it to live within you. May peace find a home in you, and from that home, may peace venture widely over this earth.

a prayer from Jill Ann Terwilliger, UU Minister in Kalamazoo, MI