For 51 weeks a year, if you and the N&O decide to keep me that long, this blog will be filled with sarcasm and snark. You’ll read about the informal BMOTY (Bad Mother of the Year) contest that I have had running with my friends for years. By the way, the winner and still champion sent her child to school with a “bad stomachache” that turned out to be appendicitis! See…dosing your kid with Motrin to get him through a half day of preschool so you can go to your yoga class doesn’t even put you in the running. But this week is Mother’s Day, so it requires a modicum of sincerity and a momentary remembrance of what brought us all here.

At first there was a decision…or perhaps a glass of wine too many that made us throw caution to the wind. In any case…we had a child. When we brought the baby home, we wondered who would be there to make sure we were doing it right. We questioned the wisdom of whoever thought we had what it took to be parents. We questioned our own judgment when our Moms asked why we didn’t warm up the baby’s peaches. We were certain that the one time we lost our temper and said that thing we said we would NEVER say would scar the child for life.

And what do we get for years of uncertainty and self-scrutiny? Months of reading birthing and parenting books? Hours of lost sleep every week? We get back-talk. We see the eye-rolling. We cringe at the words of disrespect. We fume at the unfinished chores. So what keeps us relatively sane through all of this? Every once in a while your child will do something that makes you swell with pride and makes you believe, if only for a millisecond, that you might have just done an OK job.

My first-born and I can butt heads with the best of them. I want to pull my hair out when she empties the dishwasher and “forgets” to put the silverware away leaving me stirring my coffee with a pickle fork. A couple of weeks ago, a teacher made a typo on one of her grades, giving her 10 points more on a test than she actually earned. It bumped her grade on her interim from a B to an A. (Don’t get me started on Wake County’s grading policy which makes a 92% a B!) Nice break, huh? She went to the teacher and told her about the error. The teacher, bless her heart, let the grade stand and praised her for her honesty. That’s my girl!

My baby came bursting into the world almost three weeks early and almost 9 pounds. He’s been a bundle of surprises ever since. He is the consummate boy…snips and snails and Sports Illustrated tales. But underneath the Under Armour and N.C. State hoodies, lies a young man who will always be my baby. Over Spring Break we went to Florida for a week. The drive home was long and the whole time I knew that mountains of laundry and piles of mail loomed at the end of the road. I attacked everything immediately and with intensity. As I collapsed on my bed at the end of the day, my baby asked, “What are you doing tomorrow, Mom?” I sighed and answered, “Same old, same old. Laundry, paying bills, catching up.” He put his hand on mine and said, “Maybe you should take the day off…you’ve really been working hard.”

On Sunday, I probably won’t get flowers. I’ll get a team-effort breakfast, which will taste WONDERFUL because someone else made it. They may indulge me and take me golfing. There might be a bauble or two to unwrap. The laundry will still be there on Monday. The bills will still need to be paid. But I will feel that I got the greatest gift of all…the reward of seeing my children turning into wonderful people.

Diane appears every Saturday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Diane at Live and Let Di.