...in which I am a mother.

"It will be gone before you know it. The fingerprints on the wall appear higher and higher. Then suddenly they disappear. "
- Dorothy Evslin

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Which reminds me: I need to enjoy this 'hood a little bit more. {I am speaking of the Motherhood}. Ya know, just not taking it for granted. Though blessed with a full life, sometimes it's abundance of full-ness makes for a lot of busy-ness. Days dotted with a lot of fingerprint-wiping, if you know what I mean. Instead of ignoring the fingerprints and enjoying the little fingers that made them in the first place...

Wiping Fingerprints: A metaphor for anything that keeps me from what's important.

Moments will often find me:

* Chanting, Okay, hurry, hurry everyone in the van!...whilst a little person is begging me to fix a lumpy sock inside their shoe and absolutely cannot budge because they are beside themselves with agony over it...

* Hurrying them to bed so I can have "me" time, and then missing them when they have drifted off to dream, sitting by their bedside marveling at their perfect eyelashes...

* Telling them to clean up those toys before we donate them to children in Africa. That night, swallowing the lump in my throat when my daughter cries about the African children who have no toys and guilts me with, Mom, I really want to build a house for those kids and give them toys, too...

These are moments in a mother's life. The joy of motherhood comes in moments, as Elder Ballard reminds us. We make of these moments what we will. We make or break them. Sometimes, I break them. But, to be fair, I can be found making the heck out of them, too. I just need to be in the moments that could really count for something.

Anna Quindlen drew a nice picture of it for me when she said:

“The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less”

You've heard it, right? If not, I am happy to be the one to introduce this little nugget into your repertoire of favorite quotes on motherhood.

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Sometimes I think I hear echoes of who I am supposed to be, the mother I am supposed to be. Are they echoes from a time we knew before this time? Are the echoes deep with promises I would have made then? Things I vowed to do and hopes for the great woman I would be? I don't want to regret these years, I want to have warm memories of these years, and, more importantly, I want my children to have warm memories of these years. And I mean "warm" in a very literal sense--warm, cozy, safe.

I want them to remember the mom that let them make a mess in the kitchen when they wanted to "make up a recipe". I want them to remember the mom who let them eat all the peanut-butter playdoh, instead of playing with it. I want them to remember the mom who turned up the music and sang and danced with them 'til we were sweaty and spent. The same mom who taught them about a Father in Heaven, who loves them and has a plan for them...

Punctuated throughout those remembrances, there will be other kinds of memories, inevitable as an imperfect parent. Still, I can always hope for the best...

I guess this has turned into an essay. Sometimes I write essays. And I don't even have to, or anything. It just feels really good. Really, really good. Writing. I like it. And, this is one I happen to let other people read. 'Cause other moms read this sometimes. And, we moms have to stick together.

In short:

Fingerprints: Leave them be.