I'm sorry I didn't listen when you said I was too young to start shaving. It makes me physically ill to think of the years of my life I could have saved had I not insisted you knew nothing about female bodies.
Thank you for indulging my melodramatic heart when we moved 10 minutes away when I was in junior high and assumed that childhood, as I knew it, was ending. It wasn't a big deal. And you were making such a positive change for our family. And it was endlessly kind of you to let me redecorate the room when you'd just committed to a scary-huge mortgage.
You worked NIGHTS for crying out loud. With FOUR kids. I'm sorry for every single time I woke you up ever.
When I'm at my breaking point, when a kid is screaming and sick, and I feel so exhausted that I might die, I think of you, Mom. I think of your stamina and how even now, when I'm in my 30s, you'll stay on FaceTime with me for hours while I'm sick with the stomach flu and my husband isn't home, just to make sure I don't pass out on the kids. I channel that each and every time I am breaking.
And lastly, thank you for bringing me along on your 25-year anniversary trip even though it was supposed to be just you and Dad. It opened up my world to new cultures and people and was a pivotal point in how I see the world. I thought I was entitled to come along, but now I realize the sacrifice you made to have me there. You can bet your ass I would leave my kids home.
Thank you for The Velveteen Rabbit and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Thank you for ballet lessons and acting classes and gymnastics and baton core. Thank you for dancing around the living room to "Here Comes the Sun." You helped make art one of the most essential gifts I will give my own children.
Thank you for our pet horse "Sugar" who was actually a fallen tree in the woods. You taught me that nature heals. And you made me believe a tree trunk was a horse and you seemed to genuinely enjoy it, and that's impressive AF. After 15 minutes of pretend play with my daughter, I wish a real horse would trample over my body and crush my skull.
Happy Mother's Day, mamas! Oh, but one more thing? NO THANKS for gifting us with the genes of leaky bladder syndrome. That blows.