There is no way I could do what I do without my mom.  I couldn’t commute 45 minutes on a good day to my demanding 70% corporate job and mother my three children.  I just would not be able to do it without her.   I leave in the morning and come home in the evening and I know that she will take care of all that needs to be taken care of in between.  She is up when I awake in the morning to watch the littlest while I shower and get ready.  She makes sure the boys have backpacks with lunch boxes and swim bags on the appropriate days, gloves and mittens fill coat pockets and diaper bags actually contain diapers and wipes and a change of clothes.  She will walk the boys to the bus stop if I am running behind and am still in my bathrobe.  She drives the SUV to and from basketball, baseball, and soccer practices, piano and voice lessons, and theater rehearsals.  She sorts, washes, folds and attempts to put away the kids’ laundry.  She changes, rinses, washes and stuffs Fuzzi Bunz every other day.  She turns on the slow cooker at the requested time and adds the olives during the last hour.  The best way to describe what my mother does for me is SHE GETS SHIT DONE.  I don’t have to write it down, nag, or review.  She just knows.  I wish I could get the same from all my direct reports.

It wasn’t always this way for me.  The beginning of my career as a working mother started with a nanny that I could barely afford.  I knew I didn’t want to put my children in daycare and I knew that I didn’t want to quit my job so a nanny was the in between for me.  She loved my child like he was her own and I knew he was safe with her.  But it was so hard.  So hard to give up control to someone that just didn’t take care of my child exactly (or at least close enough) to the way I did.  So it was a blessing in disguise the day my nanny quit and my husband asked if my mother would fill in until we found another nanny.  The catch was my mother lived two and a half hours away.  I was nervous about asking her.  I did not want her to feel like she HAD to do it.  But she was excited I could tell as soon as I asked her.  There was no hesitation.  My father had passed away six years prior and she had recently sold our family home and had moved to a new town.  She was ready and willing to live with us for the days I worked and go back home on my off days and weekends.

That was nine years ago.

I have come to realize that the saying “once a mother always a mother” really is true and “once a daughter always a daughter” is equally as true.

She urges me to gargle with salt water when I complain of a sore throat.  Tells me I need to go to bed earlier so that I get enough sleep.  Bags up fresh cherries that she picked the day before for me to have for an afternoon snack at work and reminds me to not forget my lunch bag as I head out the door!  However, I still roll my eyes and say, “I know Mom … “ just as much as a did as a teenager. Or laugh when she is describing the new movie she saw that was really good with “you know, that actress that was in The Help that was writing the book and the actor who played Mr. Mom …” And sigh when she can’t remember the names of the mothers at school that she has been talking to for years.  But I will still climb in to bed with her when I am anxious, scared, and upset about my life.  She will still remind me to not look past today when I call her and am overwhelmed with my never ending to do list.  And she will always, always be the one that never gets tired of my gushing about my children.

My mother is a rock.  I witnessed her dedication to my grandmother when she was in a nursing home for years with dementia.   I watched her give up her life for a year and a half and live day-by-day by my father’s side while he battled a brain tumor.  And she continues to take care of my children and me.  She is the ultimate model of unconditional love.  There is no way I could do what I do without my mom.