Mama Said

Today is my mom’s birthday. I think she’s 30. Which is weird ’cause I just turned 30, but … (trails off incoherently)

If you haven’t met my mom, you’re missing out and I feel sorry for you. She’s pretty awesome sauce.

(Before Husband and I got married, he told me that he’d never heard anyone talk about their mom as much as I talk about mine. I think it started to creep him out how often I referred to her as, “cute.”)

So for you poor fools who don’t know my mom, I’m passing along five things my mama taught me.

1 – How to bake

Listen, cookies just taste better when they’re make with a plastic bowl and a wooden spoon. I have the same red, plastic bowl that we used to make cookies in together. (Which is a total coincidence, Mom, if you find your red, plastic bowl missing …)

I still pack brown sugar with my fingers. I still scrape the top of measuring cups with the long end of the spoon so that each cup or half-cup is perfect. (Which I thought was totally normal until a friend of mine laughed – actually laughed – when she saw me do it.) I still stir it by hand, even though I have a super swanky Kitchen Aid mixer above my fridge. I still don’t use a timer. I still lick the spoon, and my cookies are delicious because all of that is the baking equivalent of pure love.

2 – Superwoman is real

My mom worked full-time, and then came home and cooked and cleaned. Every day. Pretty sure she still does. Every day.

When I got married and worked full-time … and lived in the smallest apartment in America and didn’t have kids, I would have my freak-out moments about how anyone can work all day and then come home and work more.

And then I’d remember my mother. 

And then we got a house, with a yard, and the freak-out moments came closer and closer.

And then I’d remember my mother.

And now we have a baby and my whole life is pretty much one extended freak-out moment.

And still, I take deep breaths and remind myself whose daughter I am and channel my Superwoman mother, and I get $#%@ done.

3 – If you ignore bad stuff long enough, it eventually just goes away.

That one, actually, turned out to be untrue. (Sorry, Mom.) She knows it too, and we’re exploring this vast, new world of healthy confrontation together.

4 – How to serve people

My mom gives and gives. She’s probably one of the most under-appreciated people on the planet, and I’m probably as much to blame as anyone.

If there’s a need she can meet, she meets it. If there’s a job she can do, she volunteers. If something needs to get done and no one else is stepping up, she does it. For as long as I can remember, she’s always been super involved in whatever she was doing.

I’m not sure this is entirely healthy, but it’s the way she is.

For part of my college career, I lived across town in a small house with a lot of punk rockers. On Sunday mornings, we would go over to Mom and Dad’s for breakfast. She’d cook, and then she’d clean up. Every week. In the days after my dad passed, several of those same punk rockers were at the house with my brother. She invited everyone to have lunch, and as one of them looked around the table he commented, “How long has it been since we all sat at this table and ate together?”

It’s part of her legacy.

5 – Forgiveness

No one in my life has modeled the painful, beautiful, humble path of forgiveness better than my mother. If you only knew.

And when she does it, it’s like she just does it because … that’s what you do. Not because it’s her Christian duty. Not because she’s really straining at becoming a certain type of person. I know it’s been difficult-bordering-wretchedly-painful at times. I’m not saying it’s easy. But she just does it because that’s who she is.

I have seen her so angry at people that she purses her whole face together just telling the story, and then throws up her hands half-way through because she doesn’t have the words to continue. And then I have seen her move on and get over it. I have seen her so disappointed that she cried when she thought I couldn’t hear, and I’ve seen her keep loving and encouraging the people who let her down.

She has been completely broken, but I have seen her give that brokenness to God so He could fix it, and her forgiveness has wrought miracles that none of us will ever forget – miracles that right now are waiting for us in eternity.

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Happy birthday, Mom. I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud to be like you in whatever way I can claim to be like you. I love you tons.

(Leave Mom some birthday love in the Comments if you wanna. I’m sure she’ll read them.)