It’s Mother’s Day next week so I thought it might be timely to write a letter of gratitude to my children. The people I grew like misshapen but fucking fabulous carrots: juicy ripe produce from my mum fields. Carrots who make their choices sometimes funded by me, but independent of me. You can’t tell my carrots what to do. Mine are carrots with Attitude. Carrots I love more than myself. To think I had never had any intention of growing carrots. Before I had carrots I never really liked them, and here I am with a fridge full. Turns out I’m quite the carrot grower. But the truth is, the carrots have grown me.
My children carrots are most precious. And, they’re not carrots. They’re people. They are the five people who saved me from a life of meaningless fun and success. Imagine being able to make choices that would have benefited my career? Imagine turning up to a job having slept. Or not having waged battle with a school refuser. Not having to organise school pickup, lunches, or live with the guilt of being the mum who doesn’t do canteen or forgets to turn up to parent-teacher meetings. My children gave me a drive I never had before. They taught me to use the time I had well, because there wasn’t going to be much of it. My carrots taught me discipline. And service. They taught me what it is to give continuously without acknowledgement. That is an integral lesson in humanity. I learnt selflessness. I have to admit there were times I didn’t love it. Like at 3am picking up a kid from a party. It stretched that part of me that tightly guarded my own cervix of self-interest. It has made me a much more generous person. It hurt. It still does. For that I am forever grateful.
I want to thank my children who interrupted my narcissism with calls for Vegemite toast. Whose needs came before my own. Who used my body as home and then as a direct food source for 11 years and who continue to seek my supply. It’s hard to be mesmerised by your own reflection with a constant chorus of ‘Mum, Mum, Mum’ in the background. Their trivial requests always trumped anything I thought important. It’s impossible to become a narcissist when you are too exhausted to even look at your own reflection. So for that I am forever grateful.
I want to thank my children who re-shaped my body from firm and fabulous to stretched and flabby, teaching me that being beautiful is a pointless pursuit. (At least it was before Insta.) My long, lean model’s body that was never the same after they’d launched. The children who gave me the humility of a tummy, and the generosity of a broad arse. The children who took my best bikini years and then had the hide to grow tall and lean themselves and taunt me with their own meaningless and fabulous beauty. They taught me to love something deeper in myself, to dig into my strength, to find my resilience and my self-belief. They taught me to love my softness. And how to find my real strengths. For that I am forever grateful.
I want to thank my children for my fierceness. The angry protective she-wolf of my womanhood. The part of me that snarls to protect my kids from danger. The part that gets more ferocious over time, not less, as she steps out with big Mumma energy into a world that needs matriarchal fierceness more than it needs finance. My courage, my crazy, my relentless fight for what is fair comes from my deep well of maternal love. For my kids, and for yours. I snarl to protect them all from danger. For that I am forever grateful.
I want to thank my children for teaching me to let go – the hardest lesson of my mother’s love. To understand that I am powerless. I have no control over anything. I have learnt to accept that and not go crazy. To have my babies in my arms, to see them grow and then to leave. Then to prowl their empty bedrooms and hold that quiet sorrow in my shadows as part of my mother love. As part of me. For that I am forever grateful.
I want to thank my children for teaching me to love.
To be quiet when I want to speak. To surrender when I want to fight. To give when I want to take. They have made me a much better person than I was before I met them.
So for Mother’s Day I acknowledge the enormousness of what I already have.
They are my gift. Happy Mother’s Day. Love your carrots.
Don’t forget their ability to judge which parent is best at what, and then forbid you from doing those things you have been deemed ‘unworthy’ to do. It certainly helps if you have children later in life as to have the resources to have both parents present, and purchase whatever you need without worrying about finances. I couldn’t imagine having a kid at 20. Would not have worked out well.
love you Mandy. you get it Mama !
Thanks , Mandy. Great column as usual. Hope your carrots give you something worthwhile this Sunday , even if it’s only heaps of gratitude.