Mother’s Day Musings

Sunday is Mother’s Day.
 
What I have found is that monthly (weekly? daily? hour by hour? minute by minute?) I tend to need a little encouragement in the arena of parenting my adult sons.  
 
So here are some musings on motherhood to give solace, provoke your funny bone and remind you, once again, that whatever you are thinking and feeling as a mom, has been thought of and felt before.
 

“A vacation frequently means that the family goes away for a rest, accompanied by mother, who sees that the others get it.” 
Marcelene Cox

“Sometimes when I look at my children, I say to myself. ‘Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.’”
Lillian Carter, mother of US president Jimmy Carter, at age 82
 

“Dance like only your kid is watching. Cook like no one will scream they hate it. And sneeze like you won’t pee in your pants.” 
Kristin (@shriekhouse)
 

“Motherhood: Powered by love. Fueled by coffee. Sustained by wine.” 
Unknown

“Having kids makes you look stable to the people who thought you were crazy and crazy to the people who thought you were stable.” 
Kelly Oxford

 “Waking your kids up for school the first day after a break is almost as much fun as birthing them was.”Jenny McCarthy
 
There has never been a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and philosopher
 

 
A mother is never cocky or proud, because she knows the school principal may call at any minute to report that her child has just driven a motorcycle through the gymnasium
Mary Kay Blakely, American journalist
 
No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle aged children for signs of improvement.
Florida Scott-Maxwell, American psychologist and actor
 

 
Whenever I’m with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.
From The Kitchen God’s Wife by Amy Tan
 
My children…have been a constant joy to me (except on the days when they weren’t).
Evelyn Fairbanks, American writer and educator
 

 
…the end of the day…usually finds me sitting in the old rocker, shawl over my shoulders…knitting and purling to my heart’s content. I’ve spent hours in therapy warding off the fear that I would eventually turn into my mother. Whoever thought that I’d actually turn into my grandmother?
Ellen Byron, playwright
 
 
Arthur: It’s at times like this I wish I’d listened to my mother.
Ford: Why, what did she say?
Arthur: I don’t know, I never listened.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
 

  
“Motherhood is like Albania–you can’t trust the descriptions in the books, you have to go there.” 
Marni Jackson
 

 
My mother was dead for five years before I knew that I had loved her very much.
Lillian Hellman, American playwright and writer

My mother said to me, “If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general, if you become a monk, you’ll end up as the pope.” Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist

If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, American First Lady and editor

The most important thing she’s learned over the years was that there was no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.
Jill Churchill, American writer
 
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
And, of course, 

Iris Ruth Pastor