Every year around Mother’s Day, I tell myself I’m going to write something simple.
A neat little post. A few heartfelt lines. Maybe a nice photo.
And every year… I fail miserably.
Because motherhood, as it turns out, has never been neat. Or little. Or something that fits comfortably inside a square on social media with a pastel background and a tidy quote.
Motherhood, at least in my world, has looked more like flannel pyjamas and bare feet on frozen timber.
Like one small boy, pre-dawn, standing on a half-built verandah in sub-zero temperatures, fashioning bows from bamboo and string as though he’d been dropped in from another century. Completely alive in the extremes. The colder the better.
It’s looked like bent nails turned into fish hooks by tiny determined hands… a child who somehow arrived on this earth already knowing how to wait. How to watch. How to trust the stillness.
It’s looked like a firstborn on two wheels… except preferably one… skidding sideways through mud and puddles with a grin that said catch me if you can.
And it’s me…
Somewhere on the boundary, heart in my throat, trying to work out that impossible dance between holding on… and letting go.
I thought when they were little that motherhood was mostly about keeping them safe.
Now my kids are in their late twenties and thirties, I know better.
It’s still about keeping them safe, it’s just that now the dangers aren’t always visible.
Sometimes they’re heartbreak.
Sometimes they’re grief.
Sometimes they’re the silent battles nobody sees.
The past few years in our little town have tested many families. Ours included.
We’ve buried friends far too young. We’ve watched people we love try to navigate loss that no parent can fix with a band-aid, a hot Milo, or a cuddle on the couch.
And if I’m honest… that kind of motherhood asks different things of you.
Less fixing, More listening.
Less talking, more sitting quietly beside someone you’d give your own heartbeat for… wishing love alone could do the heavy lifting.
(If only.)
And somewhere in the middle of all of that… life keeps moving.
Kids grow up.
Families evolve.
Ours became a beautifully blended, slightly noisy, gloriously imperfect tribe of five.
There were step-ins, step-ups, awkward moments, beautiful bits, belly laughs, healing bits… and somewhere along the way, “mine” and “yours” quietly became ours.
Which, now I think about it, feels a lot like motherhood too.
Messy.
Unexpected.
Not always easy.
But deeply worth it.
And then there’s my mum, now in her nineties, still teaching me things I probably should have learnt years ago.
I watch her hands now… older, softer, slower perhaps… but still steady, and it stops me in my tracks every single time.
Because one moment you’re being mothered…
…and the next you’re the one doing the mothering…
…and then one day you realise you’ve been both all along.
So today, I know Mother’s Day can land differently.
For some, it’s breakfast in bed and burnt toast.
For some, it’s silence.
For some, it’s grief.
For some, it’s longing.
For some, it’s complicated.
For some, it’s beautifully ordinary.
However today finds you… I hope there’s kindness in it.
I hope there’s fresh air.
I hope there’s laughter somewhere.
And if there are kids involved, I hope at least one of them comes home muddy.
That usually means you did something right.
Happy Mother’s Day…
To my mum.
To our beautifully blended crew.
To the mums in the thick of it.
And to the ones quietly carrying more than most people know.