Word to Your Mother

OK, so today is Sunday and I am enjoying my court-appointed-bonus-day with the Chicas, aka, Mother's Day. Today, like most years, feels an awful lot like a regular Sunday, but that is the glory of parenthood--you are given a day that acknowledges you and all you've done for your family, but you're too freakin' busy to sit back and enjoy it. So once I'm done here, I'm off to cut the grass, do the laundry, and clean the bathrooms--you know, all the sexy glamorous stuff that makes dudes sit back and say, "Man, I gotta get me some of that!"

I still have to call my own mom, a task that I embrace, because if I have to call her, that means she is not here. Now don't get me wrong--I love my mom, I really do--it's just that our relationship seems to be getting more difficult as the years progress. We are still close, but she drives me crazy more often than not. I would feel tremendously guilty, but I am pretty confident the feeling is mutual. I also have to call my step-mother, which I kind of dig, because she always seems genuinely surprised and touched by the fact that we remember her on this day. She doesn't have children of her own, so she thoroughly looooves her grandmother status, and just can't seem to get enough of those Chicas.

Being a mom is something that I don't think about too much. I can't think about it, really, because if I take a moment to ponder on the enormity of the job I do and what is ahead of me, it's completely overwhelming. Deer in headlights, turtle in shell, paralyzing. I have been given charge of 3 remarkable human beings, when most days I am a hot steaming mess myself. I have to provide for them, nurture them, and help them to grow into the women I could only hope to be. I feel no different today than I did when I was 17, so how on earth can I be qualified to do something so monumentally important? There was no background check, no owner's manual, nothing--just here's your baby, good luck!! Seriously.

And when I think about the complexity and importance of being a mom, and how I genuinely want to do right by them, I cannot help but think about the d-i-v-o-r-c-e. People always ask me why, if I was so unhappy, did I stay so long? I honestly don't have an answer for that, but I do know that if I'd left when I initially realized I'd made a mistake by getting married, I might not have 2 out of 3 of the Chicas. Definitely the 3rd. So apparently, this is my journey, what the Big Man wants me to live through, experience, and figure out. I'm a single mom now, and on a lot of days it really sucks, but then I look at those Chicas, and see that they are healthy, and happy, and it keeps me going. One foot in front of another, one tiny step at a time, I'll get there. Chin up.

The past 10 years have flown by, yet on the other hand feel like an eternity. Someone once told me that when you're a parent, the days are long, but the years are short. Truer words have never been spoken. So yeah, I'm going to hang with my Chicas today, and make the dinner of my choosing that will include neither mac & cheese nor meat in nugget form. I'm going to put away my to-do-list, and take a moment to acknowledge what I've been given and what I've accomplished thus far. I am Kelly-Girl, I am a mom, and I rock. So there.