Mother's Day will soon be upon us. Every year on Mother's Day a lot of moms stop to think about their children and also the job they did as a mother. Some moms think if they don't hear from their kids on that holiest of days in motherdom that they did a bad job. I myself have wondered that in past years when I don't hear from my kids on Mother's Day. I go back through the years and put myself through the most brutal of analysis. How was I when they were little and sick and needing their mom? For two of them I was not bad on that account. I sat up with them when they were sick. I literally slept on the foot of their beds. I watched their every breath and felt their heads way too often to see if they were too hot or too cold. When they suffered, I suffered.

I can't help at times like that to think of the little one I didn't get to be there for. My heart still aches that I couldn't have been there to bandage his skinned knees, and kiss his hurts to make them better. I know we have each other now and I can be there for him when he wants me to be. I do take comfort in knowing the wonderful woman who was his mommy. She is a gentle soul who I know was there for him during those times. I look at pictures of all of them from his childhood times, and I see the love they all had and have for each other. Pictures where he is lovingly being held and shown things in his environment like a piano or a painting on the wall. Funny how he turned into an artist and musician and he was showing interest in those things as a baby. Bravo for those two wonderful people who did and do give him unconditional love. In some ways he is doubly blessed, because now he has two moms who not only fuss over him, but love him unconditionally. And he has a dad who sees him as a best friend, and a quasi-step dad who thinks the world of him.

As for the two kids I got to raise, I guess I feel I have always been there for them. I have been too hard on them sometimes, expecting them to be the best that they could be. We did a pretty good job with them though. They are good people, productive, smart - wonderful adult people who love their spouses and are conscientious loving parents. At the end of the day, I rest easy with the people they have become, even if there are a few niggling feelings of remorse for the times when I was less than a perfect mom.

Why is it you only figure these things out when it is all in the past and you can't do it over? I know! Because it then qualifies you to be a grandparent!! I don't have many regrets in that department at all. Thank God!