Mothers are some of the most amazing creatures in all of humanity.
While they say there aren’t many ways to be a great mother, there are tons of ways to be a good mother. And good mothers can get things done because they can be found in all the places where daily life happens. It’s in those places where her own life happens, too.
Mothers can be found at the bottom of the stair steps, making their awkward pre-teen girls return to the top and having them ‘come back down like a lady.’ (Ask me how I know that.)
They can also do their darndest to make their tomboy girls stop burping the alphabet – but Moms may or may not win that standoff. (Ask my older sister how she knows that.)
Mothers are found behind scoop shovels in the grain bin, behind the men who grow that grain, behind the steering wheel of a tractor and behind livestock and sorting panels.
They are found in delivery rooms, classrooms, restrooms with diaper changing stations, board rooms, lunch rooms, store rooms, play rooms, show rooms, press rooms, darkrooms, mud rooms, bathrooms with sick children, and bedrooms of children who are frightened from nighttime storms … even in courtrooms and basement rooms while those storms rage.
I recall an entire summer when severe storms and flooding threatened our area. My husband worked nights, and most times the storms waited until after he had gone to work.
Our small one-room basement at the time had a cellar-like door that pulled open from ground level, with steps leading underground, and you closed the door on top of you (very “Wizard of Oz”-like). It featured a hot water heater, a moist dirt floor and a narrow crawl space.
And probably four-legged beings we didn’t want to know about.
As the black clouds approached one night, I put shoes and warmer clothing on our three toddler children, grabbed blankets and a few snacks and took everyone to that basement, and closed the door on top of us. That was in the days before everyone had cell phones.
How boldly we lived then.
It’s an assignment of sorts, keeping young children from noticing our own fear, and finding things for them to do with only the light of a flashlight. That night, water had seeped in, and I was praying we wouldn’t be in there long enough for it to rise enough to make us have to stay on the steps either until the storm passed, or until my husband returned home. And I prayed a tree wouldn’t lock us down there until he got home at midnight.
The storm came and went. We emerged unscathed and our kids thought it was quite a glorious adventure. Mothers should be the ones appearing on the Oscar Awards stages.
Mothers are found on top of ladders hanging Christmas lights and underneath piles of manure-laden laundry. They’re behind the scenes of all that happens on the farm—helping with chores and field work, loading cattle, hogs, sheep and syringes; managing bills and book work, tending to those who are sick—both in the house and in the barn; loading/unloading hay, making sure everyone is fed and clothed, rousing the house so everyone gets where they’re going on time, and sometimes threatening with a spatula when time and patience run short.
She leads the eulogy when the dog is buried, and the joyous song before birthday candles are blown out. She greets the school bus with bittersweet tears, knowing those years go by all too quickly; and helps choose prom and wedding gowns with those same token tears. She loves fiercely, and disciplines with a heavy heart sometimes.
She strains underneath the load of motherhood—sometimes standing over caskets and beside others who stand over them. She feels the weight of all the responsibilities that rest on her shoulders in good times, but especially during the trials of her life when the family she asked God for feels like an awful lot to carry.
And still, whether exhausted, exhilarated or exasperated by the demands of motherhood, she says she would dare to do it again.
There is no other plausible explanation for the love of a mother … other than “God’s most amazing miracle in skin.”
“Children are living messages we send to a time we will not see.” (Charles Whitehead)
(Karen Schwaller writes from her grain and livestock farm near Milford, IA. She can be reached at [email protected])