The other day while shopping, my 26 year old daughter asked me what I wanted for mother’s day. We were looking at purses at an outlet and I mentioned I liked a particular purse and she said, “Do you want this for mother’s day?” I thought for a moment and realized I really didn’t want anything they had to spend a lot of money on, I just wanted a picture, taken on my daughter’s phone last month of my husband and I all dressed up on our way to the Lung Cancer Crystal Ball, printed out and framed. I have no idea how to do it myself. I just don’t understand why it is so easy to send a picture that is on a phone around the world on the computer, but almost impossible to print it out like the old days.
Apparently it is a lot more of a pain in the neck than just buying me a gift, because the response was “Ugh, I don’t have a printer, where am I going to do that living in the city? Just go to the camera store in your mall and give them your phone and tell them what you want, and I will buy the frame.” We were both laughing as I said, “Well, Happy Mothers Day to Me!” But this got me thinking as we headed back to my younger daughters lacrosse game and we were sitting near other moms of girls on the team.
Three of us, all freshman moms, were cancer survivors, three out of the nine freshman moms. I am an eight year lung cancer survivor, one was a two year breast cancer survivor and the other was a blood cancer survivor, now in remission for one or two years. Yet here we all were, sitting in the stands watching our daughters playing D1 lacrosse for a school of high academic caliber on scholarships. Any mother’s dream for their child and the type of thing a mom prays to God they will be around to see the moment right after they hear the words, “It’s Cancer”.
Deep in my heart I knew all along I had already been given my mother’s day gift, my Christmas gift, my birthday gift and for that matter, a winning lottery ticket . There was truly nothing else in this world that is more of a gift to me than being able to shop with one daughter and sit in the stands with my husband watching the other daughter. Of course I can say that to my girls but it will sound too simple, just like it did when my mom would tell me all she wanted for Mother’s Day was for all of us to be together, which is very clear to me now.
If they only knew there isn’t any gift in the world better than the one I have already been given and they can never come close to giving me anything better than more time with them. But perhaps one day when they are mothers they will truly understand. In the meantime I guess I am going to the camera store at the mall to create my second best mothers day gift ☺. Happy Mother’s Day.