For years, when I came back to see my mother after being in the parenting trenches for months on end, I wanted her to congratulate me for not losing them. I could not have articulated it, and it sounds ridiculous anyway.

 

"Good job! You still have all your kids since last summer!"

 

But I did think it was an accomplishment worth celebrating. How else could I keep on keeping on without a few accolades? In her absence, I had fed them regularly, found and refound the shoes that tended to walk away of their own volition, and kept track of toddlers in the parking lot.  This was difficult, especially when the twins and Benjamin made a pact to split up and run as soon as I unbuckled them. They were all preverbal back then, so I still wonder how they planned it. I also am embarrassed that I forgot each time, until they sprinted.

 

I did manage to retrieve them. Why were there no awards for this? I got other rewards for less significant things like getting a story published in Chicken Soup for the Soul, or orchestrating a program for 300 children. Yet the mammoth task of routine parenting for endless days and sleep starved nights went under the commemorative radar. 

 

Surprisingly, raising children is not an auto pilot endeavor. We tend to assume that once you go through the messy business of birthing them you will coast. But as I heard Brad Pitt say, when asked about having six kids, "It's not as easy as you think."

 

Not exactly Shakespeare, but I like it. Having nine children of my own has been a hefty expenditure of effort. Why is there no system of annual festivities, at least as pompous as they drum up for eighth grade graduation?

 

I grant that today is indeed Mother's Day and I will no doubt be served a labor intensive breakfast, and enjoy reading a burst of crayoned cards. The fam might even do the dishes. But compared to the standard corporate Christmas party complete with bonuses, it will be tame, if not lame. 

 

For similar reasons I want to acknowledge people who keep being married. I do a rather pathetic job of it. Sometimes I send a card and newsletter on their anniversary. I have been known on occasion to deliver flowers and more occasionally still, serenade couples. But does that minuscule effort actually begin to pay homage to another 365 days of showing up?

 

I suppose if people only stayed married in breathless anticipation of the arrival of buoyant balloons and cream filled cake once a year, the practice would have become extinct a long time ago.

 

We do it because in a ceremony surrounded by people we love, we promised God and everyone within earshot, to keep on keeping on. 

 

 

 

Photo by Jenny Stein

www.caringformarriage.org