I have decided I dislike sappy Mother's Day tributes. These saccharine testimonials usually come in two categories. Mum gets thanked for bandaging the skinned knees, baking the chocolate chip cookies, foregoing the Cancun vacations to pay for the braces, and basically not having a life. Stretch marks, like most battle scars, aren't pretty.
Children are often inconvenient, prickly creatures.
I currently parent two teenaged boys. My sons are prime examples of why I sometimes wish I were in Dixie, on Martha's Vineyard, or at a cabin in the Canadian Rockies. Away from the clomping of size 10 feet and adolescent angst. Wid, my youngest, wrote a short essay about me for Mother's Day. The little twit didn't rise up and bless me.