Yesterday afternoon, one of our friends dropped in for a catch-up. He's a lovely guy, in his early 40s, single, one dog, no kids. I get the feeling that he loves his dog more than anyone or anything else in the world. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice dog - great temperament, very well-behaved, kind of cute....but hey, it's a dog. At one stage of the afternoon he even said that dogs and kids were pretty much the same. I didn't even know where to start. Anyway, let's get to the point...
So, he came in and we chatted away for a while - how his business is doing, what's happening with his ex-girlfriend who's been giving him trouble, what his parents are up to, his holiday plans, his new business idea and so on it went. I started getting a bit frustrated that the 'conversation' was all about him. What about us? What about me? What about Boo?
After he left, I wondered what I would even have had to say if he had thought to ask after me; what I've been doing. My usual answer is something along the lines of "Oh nothing much" or "Oh you know, just the usual". I find that I just tend to downplay my life as a mother with people who aren't parents....I guess I figure that what I do at home all day must just seem like mundane, boring, mind-numbing 'stuff'. But is it?
I started to think of what I do as a mother and I decided that while there's nothing in and of itself that is particularly news-worthy, all of it together amounts to just so much. What do I do? I crawl after Boo pretending to chase her. I read her stories. We play peek-a-boo. We sometimes go out if it isn't too hot. We play in the garden; feeding the ducks and chooks, hunting for the last remaining grapes on the vine, playing in the sandpit. She presses the buttons on the washing machine for me once I've loaded it up. We play with musical instruments. We make a mess in the kitchen cupboards. We sing and dance together. We eat lunch. We play with dolly and teddy. We feed the fish. We play hide and seek. We blow bubbles. It's all completely inconsequential. It's hardly worthy of conversation. Even my hubby only gets the highlights - what new word Boo tried to say, where she tried to climb, what her latest accident involved...
But it is these inconsequential moments of motherhood, that fill our days and our weeks and our months that indeed hold within them the power to transform the human race. I know that what I am doing, very intentionally, is raising a new member of the human race...someone with the capacity to understand that we are always kind to others, that we take responsibility for our actions, that we show love and gratitude to all, that we commune with our creator, that all are actions in this world have an influence on the progress of our soul in the next...A day in the life of a mother may not make for great conversation but it WILL make for a great planet. And that's not inconsequential at all.
