AVAILABILITY - PRECIOUS BEYOND MEASURE

While waiting for my daughter to bring in our order I sat at our chosen table far from the crowd as usual and looked around me. Yes you guessed it right.... 'people watching'.  One of several ways I get my learning.

Oh it's the usual crowd of families, noisy kids, lonesome selves, the young and the not-so-young. My attention was drawn to a mother with her two kids three tables away from where I was sitting. She looked frantic giving instructions on the cellphone to an employee who seemed to have screwed up something at the office. That much I gathered. Meantime, her two little girls were pulling at her sleeve trying to call her attention to spaghetti sauce spilled on their dresses. She did see but carried on with her tirade on the phone. Well, to make a long story short, the mother fuming mad over the spill and the office fiasco pulled her girls out of their chairs and stormed out of the store probably headed for home.  I would presume that wasn't the last they, the kids and the erring employee, would be hearing from her that day.

Anyway.....

this brought back memories of my working-mom days long ago.... and a short piece I wrote in the blog back then. It went something like this.....

AVAILABILITY – IT’S A CHOICE

I remember when my three daughters were just perky kids running here and there all over the house and I, a working mom, was working my butt off at the office, there were days when the maid would call me up and tell me that one of the kids was running a fever or the other wasn’t eating her food, or the youngest won’t go to school.

Well, in matters of illness, I’d have no second thoughts about rushing home. My
boss would have to put up with that one, like it or not. Other than that, I’d have
the maid bring the errant little one to the phone and we’d talk. In this instance, the naughty little angel would spill her heart out in an endless chatter only a mother would understand. I’d be there glued to my seat listening while the clock ticked off the minutes like a taxi meter. Yet it was worth it all. I knew she felt better when the conversation finally ended. So did I.

I wasn’t trained to be a mother; no woman is ever prepared to become one. Even if you have seen your mother, aunts, grandmother, and lady friends do it… it’s never until you are in it yourself that you learn.

But the one great lesson I have learned is this --- be available. No matter if you’re late in the night preparing reports for a sales meeting the following morning, when she comes to you for whatever reason – stop what you’re doing, listen and be with her. She’s the number one person in your life --- so let her know it! Let her know how much precious she is to you. That she is your universe. That she makes your world spin happily. Because she is and she does!

In my case, with three daughters, that point is well taken. They know that they are my life -- that they are God's gift to me... that because of them I am one frantic, frenetic basket of frazzled nerves, with a dried-up purse but definitely a happy contented working mom!! Just won’t have it any other way. But of course it won't harm if I had a big fat pay check too to go with that.

You can’t be Perfect Mom, but you can be Available Mom! It's just a matter of
choice. And a choice like that is certainly perfect, no matter how you look at it.

-End-

Love your family;  love your children.
Money is never a substitute for them.
They're God's gift to you.
God bless you and your precious family.
Have a blessed day, folks!