Mother’s Day is almost here, which is why the Internet is being deluged by posts that wax poetic about women, who give and give and give, until like Charlotte the spider, they croak.
I told you: spiders = inspirational mothers.
Of course, there are a few human ones that make the grade too.
My mom, your mom, his mom, her mom…
Most people think their mom rocks, save for some of today’s self-absorbed teens. But even those petulant offspring come around at some point. Typically, it happens after they start having babies themselves.
Sure, there are some women who don’t deserve to be included in the sorority of motherhood, especially the ones who use their children’s backs as ashtrays or the ones who admit to hating their kids with such a passion they feel compelled to kill them.
But this post is not about those bad apples; rather, the goal here is to spotlight quality moms with a whole lotta heart.
For example, Caroline Ingalls.
Wife to Charles, and “Ma” to Mary, Laura, Carrie, Freddie and Grace, Caroline Ingalls was the model pioneer mom.
As a kid, I’d watch “Little House on the Prairie” and wonder how this woman kept it together on a daily basis. She worked day and night making every meal from scratch, scrubbed clothes clean on a board with water she had to fetch from a creek, and rounded up spooked animals in the middle of lightning storms.
Yet through it all she remained as cool as a cucumber, rarely raising her voice or allowing the weight of her problems crush her humble spirit.
She was always there for her kids and knew just what to say to make them feel better. Caroline’s words were always lovingly measured and fell from lips that were permanently curled into a smile. She woke up in the morning with a halo of light around her head and went to bed without the glow being diminished by a single watt.
Still, as much as I loved and admired Ma Ingalls (inspired by the real deal), I never once wished she would replace my own mother. Rather, my hope was that one day I could be the same type of mom she was to her kids.
Fast forward 20 years, and I doubt my daughter would say that Caroline Ingalls and I were separated at birth.
If it’s true that we admire the traits in others that we lack in ourselves, what can be deduced from my picks of model moms?
What do your top mom picks say about you?