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This one's for you, Mom

Sylvan Lake News/Eckville Echo Editor Sam Macdonald discusses the virtues of motherhood.

This weekend, we celebrate Mother’s Day. I don’t know about anyone else, but I plan to place a really long call across Canada, back to where I grew up, on Sunday - we’re talking at least two hours on the phone, gabbing with my mother. It’s the least I can do for the person who probably is my biggest fan, after all.

It’s the next best thing I can do, I suppose, short of visiting her outright, given the tremendous geographical distance between Sylvan Lake, Alberta and Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where she lives. I would like to make a card that would make it to her in time; to make her supper; heck, to wash her car and do all her chores for her - all kinds of things, but when the distance is as great as it is between us, a call with have to suffice.

But, you know what? That’s all she really wants, anyway. That’s another thing that’s great about my mother (and mothers in general); hearing from their kids who live a great distance away is - often - all they need to be happy on their big day.

And that’s saying something about how grateful and wonderful mothers are, when mothers work as hard as they do to make sure their children’s needs are met, straight through until those children become adults. If only motherhood were as simple as it seems to be, at a superficial first glance - my mother’s life would have been a whole lot simpler, raising a fella like me!

We say the word ‘mother,’ but like many other moms, mine has been a cook for me when I’ve been hungry; a nurse for me when I’ve been sick; a therapist when I’ve dealt with pesky personal and emotional problems; an occasionally tough life-coach when I needed a good kick in the butt to get going - even a forbearing editor and proofreader, when I’d cobble together haphazard term papers in high school and university! One word describes many full-time jobs that have an assortment of responsibilities.

It certainly is a misnomer to assume motherhood is as simple as the one word that describes the many roles they take on, in our lives. They are there for you when you are at your lowest lows, ready to pull you up, and get you back on your metaphorical feet, and they’re there to cheer you on when you at your highest, happiest most successful moments in life, celebrating alongside you - just as thrilled for you, as you are.

I’ve lost count of the things my mother has taught me since I was young. From the finer points of grammar, when I used to talk how “I seen deers when we drived to Helli-fax [Halifax],” to some of the subtler social skills I can (sometimes) conjure up - so much of that came from the gentle influence of my mother.

I can say with certitude that my mother has played and continues to play a very important role in my life. No matter what kinds of successes (or screw-ups) I encounter, I know that at the end of the day, my mom is going to be proud of me and unconditionally supportive.

I think there is a reason they use the metaphor “Mother Earth,” or “Mother Nature” so often, colloquially - it’s easy to see how one’s own mother can be so important and so much of one’s own world!