Mothers do many things. They wash, wipe, pick up, put down, stack, mix, measure, talk, sing, read, play, redirect, and laugh. And that may be in the first 15 minutes of the day. Most mothers are veritable whirling dervishes of activity.
And yet a mother’s most important job may look deceptively passive. A mother’s most significant task may be to simply look at her children.
A mother sees subtle changes from day to day. She notices those newly-braced teeth shifting before the first week is out. She’s first to observe when a child is about to outgrow his shoes.
A mother sees the emergence of new skills. She observes her eight-month-old studying a toddler as he gets the idea of pulling up and walking. She watches the preschooler stare at her big brother doing homework while laboring over writing the letters of her own name.
A mother’s gaze takes in her child’s experience. She sees the sadness in his eyes even when there’s a smile on his face. She recognizes quiet in an otherwise talkative child. She notices when her son pushes away a plate of his favorite food.
When others are celebrating their own success but her child didn’t make the team, she sees the disappointment in his face despite the congratulations he offers his friends. When her child doesn’t get into the college of her choice, she sees the ambivalence as her daughter mails an acceptance to her second choice school.
But she is also first to see joy. When a child comes home with a face radiating sunbeams, a mother’s heart lifts before she even knows the reason why. She sees the tiny grin on the face of a child when he hands her a test marked with a big red “A.”
A mother bears witness to her child’s life. She marks the events of that life with importance, silently declaring them worthy of her noticing and remembering. Her children’s experiences are underscored, highlighted and catalogued as precious memories by this one who was there all along, watching with the eyes of love.
Children know that their mothers are watching them, day in and day out. And in their faces, children read the affirmation that their lives matter.
