I have completed my annual Mother's Day project-- writing a letter to each of my children. When Clark was a baby I was so grateful to have him and to be a mother that I decided Mother's Day was going to be a day for me to celebrate being a mother. Abe has always acknowledged the holiday sufficiently with flowers and cards and breakfast. I just never wanted to feel disappointed or sad on Mother's Day. It happens more often than it should for too many people.
So I write a letter to each child describing them and the things I love about them and the special place that each has in my heart as well as in our family. The letter is then kept in their "baby box". It is very cathartic for me. It reminds me of just how unique and special each one is and how they have blessed me and what I've learned from them. And it has worked to make every Mother's Day a lovely day for me.
On to a question I have to those of you reading this.
This afternoon Abe was watching old home movies with the kids. Not movies of our family, but movies of his family growing up. The kids love it and Abe loves it. Towards the end of the tape that his sister, Marjorie, put together are a few clips of Abe and I engaged and then newly married. These clip are EXCRUCIATINGLY painful for me to watch. As in, I have to leave the room. It's not just because we are in love and acting ridiculous. I hate looking at pictures from my teenage years until about five years ago. Am I ashamed of ways I acted? I'm sure that's part of it. I'm sure I looked better then than now, but still. I don't even like reading things I wrote. Why is this? Does anyone else feel this same way or do I have some psychological disorder? It doesn't really matter I guess. I'm just curious.
4 comments:
Sweetie, I'm sorry those "newly-wed" bits were so painful.....but the real reason I wanted to show those home videos yesterday was so that you could be serenaded from the past by an amazing rendition of the Fox-Family-Classic "Have a Happy Mother's Day".........kind of set to the tune of "Brazzle-Dazzle-Day" and sung by Stuart W. Fox. You must admit, you did enjoy that!!
I love your Mother's Day tradition. Do you think it sounds crazy for me to start this tradition now before I even have a child?
oh - also I had the same type of painfully embarassing moment while preparing for a YW lesson on journals. After reading through my teenage and early twenties journals I wanted to burn them. To destroy the evidence that I was that silly and that immature. I haven't torched them yet but I'm still thinking about it.
Wow, I thought I was the only one like that. I don't even like watching my wedding video because I feel like it is so cheesey and that was not that long ago. I don't know if I will ever get to the point where I think "wasn't I cute back then?" because I still cringe when I think about dumb things I said/did/wrote when I was seven! Love the posts! The baseball picture of you is darling!
Mary
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