Happy (Almost) Mother's Day

Better than flowers and hangs right in the entry.

   Mother's Day. The day to celebrate the perfect mother: the one who has perfect hair, and perfect clothes, the perfect body, and the perfect culinary skills. Okay, whatever. Now put the fake mommy delusion back on the shelf with the rest of those sentimental bullshit Mother's Day cards, and let's celebrate real moms.
   Real moms know that stepping on a lego or a toy car is the best way to find out how many cuss words you can say in under a minute, because that shit HURTS. We watch our kids somersault off of the back of the couch, ricochet off the wall and slam face first into the coffee table, and then get up like nothing happened and laugh at us because we are making hilarious faces while we recover from the massive heart attack that we just experienced. Real moms stay up until four in the morning with sick kids, then turn around and get up at seven to go to work and pray to God that they do not end the day explaining to the police why they turned into a homicidal maniac.
    We aren't perfect. We are real people, and we have days when the kiddos are gonna damn well eat some corn dogs or hot pockets because if we end up in the kitchen today, someone is gonna die. Our houses look lived in instead of spotless because cleaning up after kids is like trying to dig your way to China; no matter how much work you do, there is still more dirt. We get blood on our good clothes because we need to clean and kiss a boo-boo and make it all better. We try not to gag as we clean off buggery faces while we wonder why the hell the kiddo's snot is that strange-ass color. We assist in making mud pies, in planting stick gardens, and building forts.

She made it black because that's my favorite color. 

   When the kiddos need help with homework, we are the ones furtively sneaking online, because we can't even remember what the heck the quadrilateral formulas are, and we bite our tongues and suffer through it even though at no time since the end of school have we needed to know quadrilateral formulas, which is why we can't remember them in the first place. We encourage the entrance of experiments into the school science fairs while hoping desperately that nothing blows up or catches fire. We go to school choir concerts instead of rock concerts, and we chaperon field trips even though we don't feel like dealing with other peoples' kids. We laminate artwork, and hang that shit up on the wall like they are priceless masterpieces, because to us, they are.
    This is being a mom. We can't be described by some sentimental poem on a Hallmark card, because we are better than that fake piece of perfection. We transcend the need for perfection, because the best mom; she's someone real: someone who makes mistakes. She's someone who gets up and holds the house together even when she feels like she is going to explode. She has mornings when she yells at everyone because no one seems to be able to get their ass in gear, and she has evenings where the dishes are going to stay dirty because she needs to go to bed early and forget that the stupid day ever happened. This is motherhood; this is what we celebrate on Mother's Day. So happy Mother's Day, to all you real moms out there. I hope you have a great day.