How NOT to spend Mother's Day

In a room, on a bed, in a hospital wheel chair holding a sobbing 2-year-old whose tears easily broke a dozen hearts Sunday.

Holding her still, so still, so not to disturb the injured left arm.

Watching her eyes roll back in her head from the pain, from the exhaustion of the day and from the crying.

Reluctantly helping nurses and doctors move her just so to figure out what was wrong and how to fix her and how to wrap her small arm in a splint and how to get her small body to lay flat on an X-ray table.

Teaching for the first time what a hospital is, what an emergency room doctor is, what the kind nurses will do and how she was just born there two years ago.

Shhing her, talking to her, hearing her say boo-boo and trying not to cry too much, trying not to appear too scared, trying not to think the worst, whatever that is in a moment of torture.

Then, seeing all her pain disappear with a simple twist of her arm by a very smart, heroic doctor who felt that elbow pop right back into place and assured us she would feel better in a couple minutes.

Watching the smile return to her face, again, and how she searches her arm up and down for the now missing boo-boo that kept her down and out for two hours. Letting her and her sister gleefully eat cheese puffs and chocolate stuffed cookies for the first time and not feeling an ounce of guilt and never feeling more happy about junk food and the pleasure it carries with it.

Telling yourself that rough housing with daddy and twin sister is OK, it is bound to happen, that boo-boos happen. This is life now. This is motherhood. This is Mother's Day -- every day. There are no holidays -- except every day, to be here witnessing human life and two childhoods unfold and holding your breath and screaming in your hands and closing your eyes to try and block some of it out.

All in a Mother's Day, I suppose.

Happy?

Undoubtedly.

Tired?

Immensely.



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