Happy Mother’s Day
My daughter, Delilah, is a loving, very thoughtful and caring, sweet young woman. She has 3 children and one more on the way. She truly has a “mother’s heart” and knows just when to say what I need to hear, good and bad! This is the sentiment in her card to me:
“Even when you’re all grown up, your mother still can say
Exactly what your need to hear
to take your cares away…
Even when you’re all grown up,
Your mother still can do
Some special little favor
that just means the world to you.
She still can really make your day
in one way or another…
YES, even when you’re all grown up,
You ALWAYS need your mother! and inside: You always knew what I needed, hope you know I’ll always need you.”
My son, Noah’s card had a French bulldog (We have a brown brindle female) on the front with pink furry slippers in its mouth and the inside said, “No body else could ever fill your slippers.” Really cute! I am very blessed to have them both live in the same neighborhood wit us!
This is from a blog I read this morning, and it brought back so many memories of my own mother in law. She was a hard woman at times to love, but raised her son to be a wonderful husband and an excellent provider, and we’ll be married 33 years on May 16th. She lived with us for 18 years, and we certainly had our ups and downs!
Please read this from someone I’ve never met (and I don’t even know her name), but she blogged it and I read it and it is a fitting tribute to my own mother in law, Gertrude Armando, that died of lung cancer in 2004:
“My mother-in-law”
I visited my dear mother-in-law today. It was a short visit as I was taking 4 of my children to the beach.
I have never been able to call her Mom, therefore she is Rita to me.
Rita will be 85 this summer. She has been a brave widow for 14 years.
We have not always seen eye-to-eye on subjects. She loves to feed my kids candy behind my back, when I am trying to take care of their teeth by limiting sweets.
She gives me obviously used clothing that looks 20 years old. I say thank-you only now I really mean it, whereas years ago I said it only to be polite.
She gives me boxes of food to sample that she has opened and sampled first. A little pet peeve, I admit.
She reminds me to write thank you notes to Great Uncle Harry and her neighbor as if I had no training at all. Well, that’s how it seems to me.
She cannot say she loves me, after I tell her, genuinely, that I love her. She will reply “me,too”. She is of the Depression Era, where all sorts of things were in short supply. That’s the reason she loves sweets, and saves envelope tops and string. Being of hardy German stock she “holds her cards close to her”, meaning she doesn’t show much emotion.
After almost 22 years of marriage to her son, I have come to know, love and respect my Mother-in-law.
And today was the ‘cherry on top’!
My oldest son who lives 10 minutes away has not brought his 5 month old daughter to see her Great Grandma. I have reminded him of how much a visit like that would mean to Grandma Rita. He agrees on the outside, yet he still hasn’t made any effort. I hurt for Rita, feeling shunned myself by this son.
Yet her response is filled to overflowing with grace!!! She says she understands completely; that young people are sooooo busy they just don’t have time for anyone else. She sincerely does not hold it against him at all!! I am amazed.
I sniff at being rebuffed by this son and she gives grace that will allow him to mature in his own time.
How could I be blessed with such a wonderful example of saintliness??
My own dear Mother-in-law continues to teach me. Only this time, I soak it up and realize she has been a treasure in my life, ever since I met my husband.
I am not going to beat myself up for my past attitudes. I know I will reap what I sow. But if I can learn now about what it means to be a good mother-in-law, so much the better for my own daughters-in-law.”
Yes, we all reap what we sow, and the best thing any of us can do is just to love each other and be the best example to our children we can be…then hope for the best! Happy Mother’s Day!
May 17th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Debbie,
I never had the opportunity to really get to know either of my MIL’s. The first one was dead by the time we met and got married. The second one has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t know who I am so any interaction with a MIL is a teaching moment.
The card you received from your daughter was beautiful!
May 18th, 2008 at 1:21 am
Lovely message. My mother-in-law has passed away but she was such a lovely lady and I wish I’d had many more years to get to know her. Meeting my husband in my 30s and she had him in her 40s, meant we really only had a few short years together once I married Graham.
My own girls are now grown and although not yet mothers themselves, are beginning to show evidence of their appreciation of what it means to be a mum.