Another year. Another Mother’s Day.

I haven’t celebrated very many of them from this side. The first was five years ago, when my motherhood was confined to the little spark of a person growing inside me. The pregnancy tracking app on my phone told me she was the size of a lime, not yet big enough to show or to feel.

That first Mother’s Day was more about the promise of what was to come. The arrival of a little person who would turn our marriage into a family. The baby who would teach me all the highs and lows of becoming a mother.

The biggest lesson, I have always felt, was learning to look backwards as well as forwards.

Prior to that first Mother’s Day five years ago, I had celebrated twenty-eight Sundays in May honouring my own mother. I loved Mother’s Day. I have always loved gift giving, and Mother’s Day was no exception. I enjoyed picking out a gift, wrapping it up, delivering it before Mass on Sunday morning, and most of all, loved the joy that would light up my mom’s face. Hand-picked dandelions from the front yard or a new spring outfit in her favourite colour, she loved them all, every year.

Our relationship hasn’t always been the best. There were rough teenage years, even rougher twenty-something years. Although I have always, and will always, love my mom, I can admit now that some years were better than others. There was a lot of misunderstanding that went both ways, and sometimes, very little grace given.

The arrival of my daughter changed that.

I became a mother, and for the first time in my life, stood in my mother’s shoes. I endured the sleepless nights, the fussy days, the isolation and loneliness of becoming a mother during a global pandemic. I fought through days when it seemed like bedtime would never come and thought to myself, how did mom do this all day, every day, with four kids?

At the same time, I had a front row seat to my mom’s relationship with my daughter. For the first year of her life, we visited my parent’s house every Monday and spent the day. I watched my daughter sleep in her grandma’s arms, watched my mom play with her as she learned to roll over, learned to sit up. Saw my mom walk her up and down the hallway in her house, rocking her when she had trouble sleeping. Listened to her read stories to her, from the same books she read to me as a child. And most importantly, witnessed the pure and unconditional love she gave her granddaughter, and that her granddaughter gave back to her.

That love was transformational. It reminded me that despite the obstacles our relationship had encountered, I had once been that baby, that she had once walked me up and down the hall when I couldn’t sleep, sang me the same songs, and read me the same stories. That the love I saw her pour out every Monday to the best part of my life was the same love that underpinned everything she did for me.

As my daughter has grown, and as she’s been joined by her younger brother and sister, I’ve learned a lot about what my mom must have gone through in those early days of my life. I still wonder how she managed with four kids, at home with us all day while my dad worked. I still don’t have an answer.

But I do understand more of what she did, and what she gave, to be our mom. The sacrifices it took to care for us, and the frustrations and setbacks she must have endured. I’ve learned to look backwards, learned to understand what I see when I do.

A few years ago, while browsing Mother’s Day cards for the kids to give grandma, I picked up one when the words on the front caught my eye. When you have kids, you’ll understand. Love, Mom. I opened the card, read the inside, and laughed out loud in the store.

Loud and clear, mom. Loud and clear.

Happy Mother’s Day.