For Mom…
By Mike Haskins
It’s not easy to write about mothers and not be a little sentimental. I make no apologies for it.
We have this Sunday in May when we make a point of celebrating, honoring, and reaching out to our mothers. She gets a day. A bouquet of flowers. A phone call. Maybe a brunch or dinner.
Which got me to thinking, what do we get?
Mother, regardless of what Mr. Webster says, means giving.
It begins before we are born. Mothers give up comfort. Morning sickness that can last for months. Fatigue that settles in and lingers. Trying to configure multiple pillows into some workable kind of comfort, just to get a little sleep.
They give over their bodies. They gain weight, they change shape, and the truth is, they are never quite the same again. Then, after nine months of that slow transformation, they give birth. Which is to say, they endure a level of pain that has its own category. They give up privacy, modesty, and control, whatever the moment requires. They bleed, and they come right up against the edge of something serious, so that we can arrive.
And then, almost immediately, the giving becomes quieter. Less dramatic. More constant.
What we don’t often stop to consider is what mothers give us that simply becomes the rhythm of our lives.
Let's start with all those clean clothes you wore growing up. They just appeared. Folded in a way that made sense. Put where you could find them. Socks that actually matched. At some point you leave home and realize no one ever quite does your laundry the way your mom did. It’s a small thing, until it isn’t.
Or think about being sick.
I worked for a group of medical clinics at one point in my life, and a doctor told me something I’ve never forgotten. He talked about the importance of touch, of presence, of reassurance. Then he said, “If you didn’t feel well, would you rather see a doctor or your mother?”
It’s not a knock on doctors. It’s just the truth. No one knows your sensibilities like your mother does. No one has the same patience. No one sits quite as long, or notices quite as much.
That kind of comfort shows up everywhere.
A bad dream in the middle of the night. A disappointment you don’t yet have the language for. A heartbreak that feels bigger than it should. Mothers don’t just catch us when we fall, they teach us how to get back up. Both literally and figuratively, no one dries our tears quite like our moms.
Then there is the matter of food.
From the very beginning, breast or bottle, they nourish us. And from there, something deeper takes hold. Taste becomes memory. Connection. Identity.
How many times in your life have you started a sentence with, “My mom used to make…”?
A packed school lunch with a small surprise tucked inside. A sandwich that somehow tasted better when she made it. The sauce, the stew, the simple things that never quite translate when you try to recreate them yourself.
Your palate is shaped by your first chef, and that imprint stays.
But there is another kind of giving, and it runs deeper.
I have a friend who told me a story recently. Someone showed him a photograph of a teenage girl and asked if he knew who it was. He studied the picture and couldn’t place her. He finally gave up.
It was his mother.
He’s the youngest of eight children. By the time he came along, the life he knew, the woman he knew, had been shaped by years of raising a family. The work. The worry. The constant demands. Somewhere along the way, the girl in that photograph had given way to the mother he recognized.
It stayed with him. It stays with me.
Because that may be the most profound giving of all, the gradual, often invisible surrender of self. Not in a dramatic moment, but over years. In choices made quietly. In opportunities passed on. In energy spent elsewhere.
Today, women have more choices than they once did. Our mothers often didn’t. Motherhood was expected. Sometimes assumed. Birth control wasn’t always accessible or reliable. Careers were paused, scaled back, or never started at all.
Even in the best of circumstances, motherhood asks a lot.
And for single mothers, the demands multiply. Responsibilities do not divide, they stack. And while society can sometimes shrug at an absent father, it rarely extends the same grace to a struggling mother. The expectations are different. Higher. Less forgiving.
All of it adds up to a life of giving that is easy to recognize in pieces, but harder to fully account for.
Which brings us back to Mother’s Day.
It is, at its core, about making mom feel special. The center of our attention, at least for a little while. A time to express gratitude and love.
But maybe this year, it is worth going a step further.
Not just acknowledging the day, or even the role, but the specifics. The things that were done, over and over again, without much notice at the time. The details that filled in the background of our lives so completely we rarely stopped to name them.
The way things were folded. The meals that became memories. The patience we did not earn. The comfort we came to expect.
It is not so much about making her feel important as it is about making her feel seen.
Seen as a full person. Someone who had a life before us. Someone who, in ways large and small, chose to put our needs ahead of her own. Our comfort ahead of hers. Our future ahead of whatever she might have had in mind.
That is not a small thing. It never was.
So yes, flowers are nice. A phone call matters. Time together is better still.
But the words we choose might matter most. Not the easy ones. Not the general ones. The specific ones.
The ones that say, “I remember.”
Happy Mother’s Day to the women who made us.
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