2026 Life Logs, Day 130: Happy Mother’s Day
Date: Sunday, May 10, 2026
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Warmer; High Temp 65, Low 47 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
I consider parenting the hardest but most rewarding job on earth. But for women who are mothers and also work out of the home at a paid job, the task is doubled. When I married in 1974, Mark and I wrote our own marriage vows stating that our life together would always be a 50/50 proposition. And we always worked toward that. We knew we were both always going to have full-time careers, and we knew that meant the chores at home had to be 50/50. Things went along smoothly until we had children. Then I remember the ‘discussions’ about what 50/50 really means. Mark was an over the top, wonderful husband and father. He was loving and caring, could design and sew a Halloween costume in an hour., or design and build a home in a matter of months He could do the job of a plumber, or transform into an electrician. And I was always there beside him helping in any way I could. But to him, ‘helping’ meant I needed to know what to do. He always said to me, “Judy, if I have to tell you what to do next to help me, then you are not doing your job. You have to anticipate what is needed and do it without being told.” Okay. I watched and learned and did my best to support whatever he was doing. Then we had children and the discussions about what 50/50 meant changed. Mark would do anything I asked. As he would say to me, “All you have to do is ask.” That was great, but in my mind, I was always asking why he wasn’t anticipating what needed to be done before I asked. Why did I have to tell him to change a diaper, when I was expected to pick up just the right board and bring it to him without being asked when we were building something. Over the years, I just gave up and made lists and told him what to do. And in my observation that happens with many couples. Sometimes the roles are reversed, but in too many cases, it is the mother who not only has to hold a full time job, anticipate everything her husband needs, chart out the family’s schedule for the week, take on the responsibility of making the to do lists and the shopping lists, and then do 50 percent of things listed. Or if you are a single mother, you have to do it all alone. In either case, the mother becomes the manager and the worker at the same time. The responsibilities are huge.
Now, if you are a father who works full time and does most of the manual labor around the house like lawn mowing, car repairs, or fixing a clogged toilet, you might think that, of course, you have the harder job. But those things are just tasks, and I’ll bet you usually have the help of your partner in doing them. It is not the work to be done that is the problem, it is the management piece, in my observation, that keeps you awake at night and is often taken on by mothers. That management piece is what makes the job doubly difficult.
I’ll stop there because, right now, I am asking myself, why in the world I am writing this? My answer is that I think the mothers of the world deserve great reverence for the work they do every day and my rambling here is just my way of trying to find out why I feel that way. But for whatever reason, if you are a mother, my heart is with you on this Mother’s Day.
And if you are the mother of my grandchildren, my daughter Heather and my daughter-in-law Jo, or if you are the mother of children under 18, or if you have ever had children, I hope you know how important the job of ‘mother’ is in shaping the lives of our children who are the future of the world. Happy Mother’s Day!
BTW I talked with Justin and family in Puerto Rico today via Zoom, and I had a delightful dinner down by the beach with Heather and family. That’s what I meant to write about, but somehow I got off track.
