Parenting

Mother’s Day

Jeanna GLeave a comment

I hope you have a great day! You deserve it. You should relax. You should be celebrated! Put your feet up. Go to brunch! Get pampered! Oh, and try not to think about all the crap you have to do.

Know what I did today for Mother’s Day? I cleaned my house. And it made me so happy.

When I was a kid, on Mother’s Day, I decided to “do my mom a favor” and make her breakfast in bed. I put Cheerios and milk in a bowl, set it on a tray, and carried it upstairs to her bedroom. The door was shut, so I had to set the tray down in order to open the door. But little did I know that one leg of the tray was not locked open, so when I set it down, the bowl of Cheerios promptly spilled all over the hallway rug. Don’t cry over spilled milk? I guarantee you a mom is not who coined that phrase. I cried…a lot. But I cried because I was a kid and I had limited options when it came to gift-giving, and my one gift was ruined. Thinking back on it, I still cry, but now I cry for my mom. My poor mom. I mean, it’s not like I cleaned up the Cheerios. Cook, clean, repeat.

Now that I’m a mom, the greatest gift I could ask for on Mother’s Day (or any day) is a clean house. I wish for every to-do list to be checked off. I wish for no one to ask me to do anything or go anywhere. Just let me clean, so that tomorrow, when it’s ‘not’ Mother’s Day, I have one less thing to do.

*Clang* *Splash*

“What was that?”

“Mommmm. I just spilled my juice all over the table and now it’s dripping on the floor.”

Dandy Lion Wishes

Jeanna G3 Comments

Blow away the seeds of a dandelion and wish that a dream come true returns to you. How many dandelions can you find, and how many wishes can you make? What would you wish for? To see someone again? To gain something new? To have more of something you already have? To get back something you lost? Would you make a wish for someone else?

As a child, every so often, my dad would quietly wake me up early on a Saturday morning and tell me to get dressed and meet him at the car. We’d take the old, green Oldsmobile to breakfast at the Dandy Lion diner, just me and him. I probably ordered pancakes. I don’t actually remember. I don’t remember the conversations either. And I don’t remember much about what the place looked like, or even what town it was in. What I do remember is being there with my dad. Just me and him.

Early this past Saturday morning, my daughter and I were able to drive down to scoop up my dad on his 84th birthday and take him to a local diner for breakfast.

My Dandy Lion wishes came true.

The Days of Our Lives

Jeanna G1 Comment

I read today that John Aniston recently passed away. He played Victor Kiriakis on NBC’s Days of Our Lives for a very long time. This news flashed memories from childhood across my mental screen. My grandma started watching the show when it first aired back in 1965. She was a housewife, and everyday she took an hour off from the cooking and cleaning and child-rearing to enjoy her program. When I was in Kindergarten, my mom ran a daycare out of our house. I attended the morning program at school, so I was getting home as she was putting all of her charges down for a nap. This was also right on time to lie on the couch with my mom while she watched the same soap opera.

Both my grandma and mom worked their tails off, and they deserved much more than an hour-long break everyday. I work a full-time job outside of the home, so I don’t get to follow in my matriarch’s footsteps and watch tv daily from 1-2pm, but I deserve a break, nonetheless.

I heard a devotion the other day that really struck a chord with me. It was about the sacredness of the mundane (I apologize I do not know the title or author of the devotion). We can practice this by slowing down, and in those moments we have an opportunity to “discover a spark of joy,” even in activities that we do as routine or out of necessity, and not necessarily out of spontaneity or want.

Every day I’m rushing around and thinking about what’s next, instead of being present. My grandma and mom were wise women to know they needed to stop and take a break every day, for themselves. Sometimes we need to escape in order to be more present. And the author of the devotion is right about slowing down, because we all know that, “Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.”