It's the Least We Can Do For Our Mothers

Get her a card (it’s just another Hallmark holiday)? No, don’t just get her a card; do something more for her than that.

Well, take her out to breakfast or lunch. Take a moment to give her some chocolate or flowers and tell her you love her. Give her a hug and say thank you.

Being a mother is the hardest thing to do. Imagine having to give nonstop service and unconditional love for continuously for any period of time longer than a few hours.

Step outside the aspects that society focuses on, step away from the day itself that shopping centers and restaurants all welcome because sales will go up marginally.

In my Peace Studies class, we recently discussed our spirituality and life on Earth and, using an excerpt from Judith Viorst’s Necessary Losses: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow, we discussed the “ultimate connection” that we will always be trying to regain.

We all leave our mother’s womb but forever we move through life wishing we could be back inside. The womb is a place where we have no fear of being alone, we do not suffer the hints of morality, and we do not have to worry about Republicans or Democrats.

We are experiencing bliss. Floating in the warmness of our mother’s body, we are life at its finest until we are expelled.

It’s a good expulsion. It’s not the kind of expulsion that occurred because you got caught selling pills to your classmates or because you had a bag of marijuana at school. It’s an expulsion that is naturally organic and necessary for your mother to live.

When we inevitably leave the womb, we maintain that connection. For some of us, we sever it as fast as we can and others cling on to some manifestation of that ultimate connection and perhaps even fantasize that it still exists.

In my life right now, I find myself going back to my mother more than my mother. I find myself more secure with mother than father.

Although I am in college, there is no way that I could take care of myself on my own. I am working toward a career that I hope to sustain my existence for some time. (I understand that I may have many though, therefore, skill set will be used in place of career.)

Hopefully, my skill set will allow for me to seek paths and gateways to new opportunities that build up my soul and improve my heart and mind.

When I get to a point where I can use my creativity and imagination, my intellectual spirit and my passionate mind to make connections with others that result in a money flow coming my direction that will make it possible to have shelter, food, water, health care, and other amenities that one takes for granted when living with mother, the achievement will be that of my mother’s.

Mother is the one who has agreed to open her home to my small film crew that I am bringing home to film the buzz and reaction to Obama’s visit to Notre Dame. She is the one who has made it possible for me to reach out to Notre Dame students and ask them to talk to me on camera about how their campus has been transformed by outsiders over the past month.

When I succeed, my mother will be responsible for my success. I will remember the support and nourishment she gave me and I will remember how she gave and I will encourage my future wife to give like my mother did and do what I can to make sure she is able to give.

I’m very thankful for this weekend because this weekend I chose to create an opportunity so that I could take someone who I have developed a deeply profound connection with home to meet mother (and father).

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