Today has been hard. I want to explain why I choose to label today as hard, but it is far more complicated than that. It hasn’t been hard for me, so much. But it has been hard for her. Some days she wakes with a semblance of energy and tends to her small chores. She feeds her dog. She puts birdseed on the porch for the pigeons and sparrows. She checks her sugar and writes the number on a calendar on the wall in the bathroom.
I have left chores for her, so she can feel her value. Although, I don’t measure her value by what she does, she does measure herself that way. She often frets that she is not helping me. Not putting the laundry in the machine or washing the dishes. Such menial tasks. What she does do for me she cannot even see. And I couldn’t explain it to her without drowning in guilt and shame.
I tell her, “You are my mom. I love you. You may not remember all that you have done for me, but I do.” I can never repay what she has given me. Yet, when I think of my own children, I also believe that they owe me nothing. Isn’t that odd? That I, too, feel unworthy. I don’t deserve for my children to put their lives on pause for me, to escort me out of this reality. So…I can understand.
How little we women value ourselves…
I heart you