I’ve been given time alone for Mother’s Day.  Doesn’t sound like fun to many people but sometimes being alone can be quite an awesome treat.

I remembered these two photographs earlier this morning and wanted to share.  They were taken in 1990 by a dear friend of mine.  I think I had her take them for a Father’s Day gift.  They are also two of just a handful of photographs taken of me with the girls over the years. I treasure them, they speak of the happiness that was ours all the time they were growing up.

They’ve turned into wonderful, brilliant, kind women.  I’m more proud of them than anything else in my life.

On Mother’s Day children come together to celebrate the woman who brought them up.  I’ve never had a real fondness for Mother’s Day only because I’ve always felt that my children were such a gift to me.  For years they were my photographic muse.  They grew up in costumes, in studios, at parks – always with a camera in front of them.  The yearly Christmas card was what I strove for each year, anxiously waiting for the reviews.

I watched them go through their childhood, teenage and young adult years with joy and trepidation.  We all know how hard life can be and you silently hope that your kids won’t ever go through some of the things you’ve been through.  You try to guide them in a direction that will make them happy and content adults.  You encourage each one of them in their interests, nurturing those little sparks.

I hear many of my younger friends with small children of their own now talk about the annoyances of day to day life and I remember it was hard balancing everything in your daily lives.  I want you to know it’s all worth it, it may not seem so now, but it is.

So my children are now adults, I’ve been through the empty nest, I am growing in a different direction.  My life is actually the accumulation of many smaller lives, I think we are all like that.  I see mine as sort of a pie chart sectioned off, it’s not a whole yet but I can see each section as a different phase – who I was with, what I was doing.  They are all in different colors.  The biggest part of my pie chart at the moment is motherhood and it’s bright red.  It stands out.  It was the best thing ever.

So this mother’s day I’m not celebrating mothers, I’m celebrating children, my own. For without them this day would not exist.