motherhood quote

"For the first two years, you're up to your elbows in poo and puke. Then for the next 10 years, you feed them and educate them. Nurse them through every disease known to man and some known only to veterinary science. Then they shut themselves in their room and play cruel music at you and shout through the keyhole that you don't understand them and they hate you."

~Laura Thyme, "The Gooseberry Bush," Rosemary & Thyme (BBC mystery series)

I heard this last night and it really struck a chord. Yes, motherhood can be wonderful and rewarding and all of that warm and fuzzy stuff. But a rather large chunk of it makes you feel unappreciated. Those great moments when you feel your heart bursting with love and pride for your kids and everything is wonderful and you love being a mom, etc, etc, are very nice. They are also fleeting and sometimes don't happen as often as we'd like. But it's those moments that make all the mundane drudgery worth it. Because the truth (shh! it's not something we tell people who are considering making the leap into motherhood but haven't done it yet), well, the truth is there's a lot of thankless tasks involved in motherhood. It's probably the reason we never truly appreciate our own mothers until we've joined that group ourselves. And we can just forget our kids appreciating us until they've got kids of their own who don't appreciate them! And that is probably the origin of the mom curse (you know, the one where your mom hopes you have kids just like you).