In my defense, I am an introvert to the core.
I love my family dearly, I love spending time with each and every one of them, but I recharge when I have time that is mine. Time that is quiet and I have nobody’s needs to tend to but my own. Time when I can turn off that fine-tuned mama-ear that is always listening – even in the still of the post-bedtime evening – for someone’s cry, cough, or shifting covers.
Maybe that’s why motherhood was such a shock to my system. Even in the quietest, most peaceful moments there was still a part of me that was on duty.
Now I don’t really remember the events that led up to it, but I imagine it went something like this:
- discussion about how to celebrate Mother’s Day
- do we stay home? do we visit family?
- further discussion on how we can meet everyone’s needs
- even more deliberation on whether we make it a family day or an extended-family day
- semi-serious suggestion from me to just take the kids and leave me alone
And that, friends, is how it happened. My husband jumped right on that idea and offered to take our son to visit his mother for the day and leave me a house all. to. myself.
He knows me well enough to know that it was pretty much the best gift I could have been given that year.
So that Sunday morning we got up, went to church, and then they took off. I spent the afternoon watching a movie {probably a chick flick}, drinking wine, reading in the sun, and soaking up the quiet. And then my family came home and we enjoyed dinner together and I was a happy, relaxed, and refreshed woman.
I probably should have felt guilty, but I didn’t. And I probably wouldn’t choose the same ‘gift’ this year. But that year, in that moment, and in that place I got exactly what I needed.
I celebrated Mother’s Day by not being a mother.
And it breathed much-needed life back into my mama-soul.
What does your mama-soul need this Mother’s Day?
