Finding my wings

I stood in the card aisle, looking at all the different Mother's Day cards. I'm fortunate my mother is in good health. She spends her retirement days volunteering at her church, bowling on Wednesdays with a league and keeping up with her seven children, 26 grandchildren and almost as many great-grandchildren.

Most of the cards were sentimental, and those words do reflect how I think about my mom. But they weren't personal enough. I kept looking, the flowery cards getting increasingly sappy.

Not that I don't like corny, but those cards just didn't seem right for my mom who, in her late 70's, is sassy and still runs circles around me.

So I headed to the humorous card section. There were cards for children to present to their mothers, complete with pictures of youngsters covered in mud and dirt. Sending my mom a humorous card didn't seem right either, even though she's the first one to laugh at a joke.

I thought about making her a card on our home computer, but it's a long standing joke in our family that when someone receives a "store-bought" card, complete with an envelope, that person rules.

I could send her a bouquet of flowers, and she'd love that, but that gesture didn't seem like the right move for my mom this year.

When trying to think of how to honor my mom, I thought about the ways our society pays homage to mothers. Songwriters have composed hundreds of songs for mothers, both saintly mothers and rotten mothers and writers have penned thousands of poems and stories about motherhood.

It's difficult to put into four rhyming stanzas or five epic chapters exactly what mothers do that makes them worthy of praise.

They go through childbirth, a terrifying journey they and only they can travel. While they're still catching their breath, an infant is placed into their arms.

In that one heart-stopping moment, a new mother realizes she is connected to another human in an unbreakable bond for the rest of her life.

Mothers walk miles in an infant's lifetime, soothing a colicky cry or heading off to the playground. They have room on their laps for as many children as will fit, and nothing cures a bruised knee or busted knuckle quite like a kiss from mommy.

They celebrate the first tooth, first step and first words out of their baby's mouth. They hover over a toddler as they make their way into the world and then, in a gesture that is quite remarkable, they let go of their child's hand when the time is right.

Moms endure the torturous teen-age years, understanding tantrums and pouting are all part of separation because that's a child's destiny - - to go out in the world and make a life for themselves.

When those teenagers turn into young adults, mothers smile as they give away their daughters and sons to another to love, her heart breaking a little because her baby is truly grown up.

Although we honor moms on Sunday, they deserve respect every day for they have a difficult role to play in life.

They make sure their children have their feet solidly on the ground and then help them find their wings so they can fly away.

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers and, to my mom, thank you for helping me finally find my wings.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.