A post for mothers

Mother's Day was yesterday, and as usual, I'm day late, but hopefully not a dollar shy.

I'm at an age where most of my friends have reproduced or are currently reproducing. There's a lot of little ones on the go. I am most proud of the parents I know, because they are excellent parents. And parenting is really hard work, that's why I have dogs.

Now all of my parent friends will tell me that the hard work is more than offset by the love of being a parent. I know this has to be true. When I was thinking about what to write about mothers and children, my thoughts turned to all the ways mothers make you feel wonderful, and as a child, you in turn, give them a reason to favour tubal ligation.

I settled on the middle-of-the-night bathroom run. The middle-of-the-night run happens long after your parents have tucked you into bed and gone to bed themselves. While you felt fine at bedtime, now it's the middle of the night and the contents of your stomach have reformulated from harmless bedtime snack to toxic upwardly projectile substance.

I don't know about you as a child, but I don't ever remember making it all the way to the toilet. No, I remember making it to the bathroom door and in a spray reminiscent of the Exorcist, coating everything lower than three and a half feet in vomit. This is of course, very upsetting, so cue the waterworks.

Your mother, awakened by your frantic dash, gets there just in time for the aftermath if she's lucky, and by lucky, I mean spared watching you coat the baseboards with partially digested Cheerios, because you were never making it to the toilet, even if she was there.

No, she is presented with a hot, sweaty, bawling child standing in a pool of stinky puke. For the child, the cavalry has arrived. Your mom cleans you up, puts you in fresh pajamas, and tucks you back into bed. It's the best feeling in the world: you are safe, cherished, and loved. Then she goes to the bathroom to clean up ground zero, after which, she can hopefully fall asleep for a few hours before you wake up and continue puking. Or feel perfectly fine. Kids are tricky like that.

So my belated wish for Mother's Day is that all of you mothers feel safe, cherished, and loved, the same way you make your kids feel when you clean them up and tuck them back in bed after a middle-of-the-night run.

PS Other animal species are known to eat their young when under stress. Thanks for taking the high road.