Happy Mother's Day

One of the greatest challenges that face working moms is daycare. It's a heavy burden that carries so much worry and guilt. It’s easy to find someone to watch your children and not that difficult to find someone who will really care for them. The true treasure we seek, though, is someone who will love them. A person that abolishes the worry, a little of the guilt and lightens the load. Someone who loves them as their own, who becomes a member of our family and accepts us into theirs.

I am the baby in my family, yet I am a proud big sister. My mom provided childcare in our home when we were young. There were several kids for which she genuinely cared and there are a few lucky moms for whom she was the true treasure. Brandy was brought to us when her mom, Jane, first returned to work after maternity leave. She was loved beyond measure by our mother and became a member of our family. She’s amidst the family photos and, as a baby, even looked the part. Just with thick, beautiful curls. Brandy Jane was picked on like any younger sibling should be by us and my mom dreaded her growing up and going off to kindergarten like her true mother. She begged Jane to have another when Brandy turned five, but instead they packed up and moved. It was crushing.

They visited each time they returned to Kansas, wrote letters and sent Mom cards and Christmas gifts through the years. As a grown up, Brandy is fabulous. She’s tall, has completed multiple mission trips and speaks fluent Spanish. Clear and apparent signs she is not really ours. But after Mom passed, she and her family were here with us sharing the burden of grief. She shared the hurt with the man she soon married and explained, in Spanish, how a only child can have thirteen nieces and nephews.

When the first of our nieces was born, Mom was able to watch her and spare my older sister the challenge upon returning to work. After it became too much, she still saved Shelly from difficulty and pointed her straight to a true treasure. My nieces and nephew are loved and demonstrate natural abilities that clearly were not genetically inherited. They are athletic. We watch in amazement and say things like, “Look at that! Where’d that come from? It must be the Kendrick in them.”

I have faced the decision challenge of daycare a few times as a working mom. I easily found someone to watch Gabe when I returned to work. He was in good hands, but not great. Shortly after, I struck pay dirt. My father took an early retirement. Mom’s Parkinson’s was too far advanced for her to watch him on her own, but as a tag team they were the jack pot. Gabe and Lucy are completely self-confident children and often think the world revolves around them. In their defense they had Grandma and Grandpa’s complete, undivided attention for so much of their early years so in their reality, it sort of did.

We found people that cared for them at the local daycare after Dad broke his leg. When that daycare abruptly closed, I found my true treasure. The woman that had been cleaning for us was watching her grandsons and while she had no intentions of watching additional kids, she took on our Things 1 and 2. And loves them. She has become a part of our family over the last two years and we love her. We no longer depend on her full time care, but she takes them when needed and sometimes just because they want her to. There are some signs of her nurture overpowering a bit of our nature, too. Lucy loves to drink ice water and does not really care for chocolate. That is something she certainly did not learn from any of her actual relatives.

This Mother's Day, I am especially grateful for the true treasures that lighten and help balance the loads of parenting and work. For Debby who has loved my nieces, nephew, and my sister, through so much. For Purnie who recognizes my needs as much as my kids'. I am also grateful for Brandy Jane, who shares with us memories of my mother and proves the value of a true treasure is beyond measure.