​Traditionally Mother’s Day is a difficult day for me.    Almost always I feel much more resentment, frustration, disappointment, and discouragement on Mother’s Day than I feel anything else.    Most Mother’s Days I spend most of the day battling ugly emotions.    Blah.
 
I know I am not alone in these feelings.   My sister and my bonus sister have similar experiences….  Mother’s Day raises hopes that, on this one Sunday, things will be different—help with the meal, dishes done without nagging (or done at all), maybe a thoughtful gift or two—and too often it is not.    It’s the expectation that hurts....   Making the Sunday meal by myself while the family sleeps is something I just do on all the other Sundays but, on Mother’s Day, it hurts.
 
Mother’s Day 2016 was typical for me….until I realized that Mother’s Day is a celebration of motherhood, not of me.     And I am so grateful to be a mother.    WHAAAA-WHOOOO!   There is nothing in this life, NOTHING, that brings me more joy than being a mother.   Motherhood is, without exception, the most heart –filling, soul-expanding, life-enriching thing I have ever experienced.   When I redirected the day’s focus from myself (it’s not all about me….) to motherhood, the day’s feelings changed as well.   Rejoicing replaced resentment.     What a blessing it is to be a mother!!

And, at this time, I feel so blessed to be Tanah’s mother.
 
Our Miss Tanah graduated.    She graduated from Seminary and she graduated from Roy High School.  
 
In the testimony she was invited to bear at Sunday’s  Seminary Graduation she said “Sometimes I wasn’t sure what the crap I was doing in Seminary”   [I love her genuine candor] and then went on to testify of Seminary’s value.   “I teach the Sunbeams now,” she told us, “and I am so grateful for the gospel foundation I got in Seminary.”    I was so proud, so pleased, so blessed to be her mother.
 
White tassel on her cap (high honor roll) and no shoes on her feet (low happy toes), our Tanah walked in the Roy High commencement ceremony Wednesday.   She sang in the choir and she smiled in the camera and she swelled the cavities of my heart.    She is so beautiful, so talented, so gracious, so kind, so fun, and so, SO precious.   
 
I am so proud, so pleased, and so blessed to be her mother.    Graduation Day was, in a very literal way, a Mother’s Day for me…..a very happy Mother’s Day.    
 
[Ope, I’ve made it all about me after all…..]

​The Witch was in ……
 
Last weekend Tanah starred as The Witch in Roy High’s production of “Into the Woods”.     She was beautiful and wicked and powerful and poignant.     “Ask a wolf mother” she said bitingly in response to Little Red’s shrugged comment that killing did not matter because her victims were “just wolves”.    
 
“Princes wait there in the world its true, princes yes but wolves and humans too” she warned her daughter and then, in a tormented lament, she sang, “Careful the things you say.  Children will listen”
 
Her portrayal matched the power of her lines.   Convincingly wicked, she was also heart-wrenchingly human.    A mother’s love, even in a witch’s body, is intensely real.
 
But that was last week…..
 
This week Tanah graced the stage accompanied by a beast and a boy.

Nominated for Senior Cotillion Royalty, she dressed in a Belle dress for the Friday assembly and was escorted on stage by The Beast (Lance) and Gaston (Miles).     Her escorts were a hit as was her videoed response to the “What was your most embarrassing moment?” question.
 
[Her response:  My friends and I were in the bathroom talking about what a great guy Justin was and trying to figure out how old we would have to be to marry him.    Then we found out that his wife was using in a bathroom stall at the time and heard out entire conversation.]
 
Tanah told me the Cotillion Queen would be announced at the dance (in a ballroom on Weber State University’s campus) at 10:30 p.m. Saturday night.   “They probably will not let you in and I probably won’t win,” she told me.
 
I arrived at 9:53 p.m., was invited promptly into the ballroom, walked five steps into the crowd and heard “Our Senior Cotillion Queen is Tanah Hislop!”
 
…..and the Queen is out!!!

 I often go walking in meadows of clover,
And I gather armfuls of blossoms of blue.
I gather the blossoms the whole meadow over;
Dear mother, all flowers remind me of you.
 
O mother, I give you my love with each flower
To give forth sweet fragrance a whole lifetime through.
For if I love blossoms and meadows and walking,
I learn how to love them, dear mother, from you.
 
Words: Phyllis Luch, 1937-1995. (c) 1969 IRI
Music: Jeanne P. Lawler, b. 1924. (c) 1969 IRI
 
 
I do often go walking—though not as often as I would like and not always through meadows of clover—but as often as I go walking (more often actually….), I am blessed by my angel mother who did indeed teach me to love blossoms and meadows and walking.   She also taught me to love the magnificent Being who created them.     Thank you dear God, for sending me to her.