By the time my Mom passed, I was old enough to know what a fantastic lady she was and to appreciate the love and wisdom she offered me. She was my best friend and in that I am lucky.

But until I had kids of my own, I had no idea how fantastic my Mom was. Because being a Mom is hard. One minute your life is yours and you have no real need to do anything exceptional. The next minute there is this screaming, pooping, cute little monster that demands you do superhuman feats daily whether you feel like it or not. Your life is no longer your own.

Into the deep end people!
What? A life jacket?
Puh-Leeeez.

What-on-earth-do-I-do-now moments are no longer a rarity. They are daily occurrences. Suddenly you are the person who can fix everything. The buck stops with you. Your are …Mommy. And your screaming, pooping, monsters have no idea that you are guessing. You do the best you know how to do. You figure it out. You clean up the mess. You thank God and sweet Buddah that everyone survived. You hope nobody noticed you were sweating. You keep rolling on to the next crisis or bit of mass hysteria. Somewhere in there you do the mundane laundry, grocery shopping, dishes, meal making, bill paying, and making sure everyone gets fed, clothes and to their various appointments.

While you are doing it, everyone from the media, to other Mom’s, and people without kids who don’t have a clue what they are talking about are second guessing you and expecting you to look just as good as you did before the screaming, pooping, cute monsters stole your life and what was once your waist.

And you keep chugging because there is nothing you love more than those screaming, pooing, cute monsters.

Welcome to being a Mom.

If I had had any idea how hard this was, I would have bought my Mom a cape. Because she was a super hero.

There is a line in my favorite TV show Firefly when the lead character says “We have done the impossible, and that makes us mighty.”

I think, considering every day survived as a Mom is a bit of a miracle that that phrase needs to be reworked.

We have done the impossible, and that makes us Moms.

Happy (late thanks to my two screaming, pooping, cute monsters) Mother’s Day to all the hard working, underappreciated super heroes in my life.