I was just reminded by Jen at Sprite’s Keeper that this weekend is Mother’s Day!  I like Mother’s Day.   Seriously, breakfast in bed?  Homemade gfts wrapped by grubby little hands?  Flowers from the yard in a tiny vase?  Kisses and hugs and the right to choose the activities for one whole day?  Let’s face it, it’s a springtime miracle, folks!

From where I’m sitting, the only downside to Mother’s Day is that it’s on a Sunday, making it impossible to extend “my day” to a multi-day event and thus rendering the Extended Celebration Clause in my contract null and void.  (On the other hand, my birthday is on a Tuesday this year which means the world in my oyster for five full days this time … so I’ve got that going for me.  Woot-woot!)

Anyway, because this week’s Spin Cycle is about Mother’s Day, it got me to thinking … really, at its core, what are the baseline job mandates for a mom?  Surely you’ve heard Chris Rock’s take on the basic job for fathers (in case you’ve just emerged from a lifetime in a cave, I should warn you that there’s some colorful language here):

For moms, it’s different.  I think a mom’s job performance has so much more to do with modeling (and even that job is different if you’re raising a girl or a boy).   Some make-it-or-break-it areas that come to mind include body image, self -esteem, focus, self-care, communication, forming and maintaining close relationships, courage tempered with caution and a love of learning … but, as we all know, each child is essentially a black box and in the end, the only common denominators for parenting are that it’s never easy, you’re never done and the outcome is never certain.  (That’s so cheerful, I think we should put it on a greeting card, don’t you?)

We sometimes joke around here that if you’re alive, your parents did their job.  Certainly, that’s important, but in honor of Mother’s Day, I am compelled to offer this list … a resume, if you will, for my own mom – wife, mother of three and junior high school teacher for almost three decades:

1. I am, in fact, and against all odds, alive.
2. I can read, write and cipher.
3. I graduated from college – all 8 years of it – which my parents paid for, lock, stock and barrel (thanks, guys!).
4. My siblings and I like each other … pretty much.  Anyway, there has been no boodshed.
5. I am a card-carrying adult who has maintained a marriage for over 12 years and counting.
6. I have given birth and the boy appears to be thriving.
7. I can sew, bake, cook, drive a stick-shift and make food grow in the garden.
8. I can backpack, bake biscuits with only tin foil and fire and harness a cold stream to make pudding.
9. Like her, my super-power (as I may have mentioned before) is that I can find ANYTHING.
10. Also like her, I listen intently all year long to what people like and want.  On December 25th, they find it under a big tree in the living room.
11. I am a prodigious list maker who (mostly) finishes everything by bedtime.
12. I have become a good, patient mother who relishes my job and looks forward to my next decade of service (at which time my husband will pry my fingers away one by one and release the boy to an uncertain future college).

See?  It all works out …

So far, so good ...