If all you can do is crawl, start crawling. – Rumi
On my birthday my eleven-year-old son Donovan gave me a card, which I have displayed for the entire world to see. The thing is, if you have met me you know his view of me is a bit skewed. How could it not be? I’m like some mythic, regal superwoman with awesome powers who walks through this world, “beautifull, intellijent rapid and a monster at sports.”
I repeat – in my son’s eyes I am a “monster at sports.”
I’d like to think I was a monster at sports but the last time I played tennis I could only get the ball across the net 5 times consecutively; the last time I went for a run I was almost crying after I made it a mile; the last time I was in a basketball league I shot an air ball from the free throw line.
Monster, I am not.
He thinks I say, “yes” a lot.
I, on the other hand, feel like no might be my favorite word.
NO, NO, NO.
No, you can’t do that.
No, you can’t have that.
No, you can’t eat that.
Wait, did you hear what I said?
It was “No”.
My older son wrote about me in my birthday book that I was tenacious and selfless and in the same book my husband said my best feature was my heart and that the nicest thing I ever did was to marry him.
What I’m getting to, what my point here is this:
I’ve got them totally fooled.
I’m not half the woman they think I am. I am not half the mother they want me to be.
On my better days, which happen about 24 out of the 365 opportunities I have every year, I am that person and that is what they see, the best in me.
So my New Year’s resolution this year, unlike years past when I resolved things like win a race, pierce my nose, grow dreads, or open a bookstore, is that in 2014 I will try to be more the person that my children and husband think I am.
It’s a tall order but like Rumi said – you have got to start somewhere so……here’s to starting 2014 on all fours crawling and hoping by 2015 I am standing tall and magnificent and the best mom a boy could ever have and hoping my husband still think that I am the nicest thing I ever did to him because if all that is true by this time next year then it will have been a good year….for all of us.
About Rebecca Suder