Hey ladeeeeez….this one’s for you.

First off, Happy Mother’s Day to you and yo mamas. Being a mutha is hard, yo. Half dream job, half prison sentence, motherhood is a complicated adventure. So is fatherhood, but it’s not June so let’s forget the babydaddies for a minute.

Excuse me for a moment while I go get something.

(Leaves room.)

(Comes back carrying invisible soapbox. Places soapbox in front of keyboard.)

Here we are. Let me just step up…onto…GO TIME!

Now. It’s Mother’s Day….yay us. I’m proud of my family and happy to be a mom. But this, my American friends, is not a celebration of me. Or you. American motherhood is great, but it’s easy-peasy compared to poor country motherhood. Where the mamas are trying to feed their children while defending their homes - literally. Where staying home or going to work is not a choice a mother can make, and the price of gas is utterly irrelevant. Where pantries and refrigerators and toilets and make-up don’t exist, and are not missed, because they are products of a lifestyle where time and money are in abundance. This is the mother who should be celebrated today. The one carrying her babies on her back while she makes a trek to get clean water. The one who shields her children from warfare only to fight off malnutrition and disease and AIDS and a culture where being a woman is fifty times the battle western women endure.

Sometimes I complain. I’m tired of being with the kids all day long, I’m stressed out, the housework is never done, there’s nothing to eat in the house, I need new clothes, etcetera. But what am I complaining about? That I’m bored with this lifestyle that millions upon millions of women around the world would kill to have? Mothers who have risked their very lives to get to our shores would roll their eyes and perhaps spit in my general direction if they heard my whining.

And I would deserve it.

Because my life is safe and easy and blessed. I’m going to eat steak and drink a glass of wine and hug my children and maybe even get an uninterrupted nap. I am neither oppressed nor subjugated and I have a difficult time relating to American women who say they are. My children are fed. My home is safe. My life is good. My life is easy. My life is blessed.

Everyday is Mother’s Day for me.