Mom thanks for being there for me
It was 2 AM and my final was in 5 hours. As I looked at the piles of mats, finished artwork, and unfinished artwork scattered around the kitchen table I was overwhelmed. There was no way I was going to be able to get everything done.
It had been a crazy semester, my first in a challenging design program, and despite my best efforts, I was behind. The projects and the revisions and the tweakings and the constant printing never seemed to end. I had been pushed to the limit—creatively, mentally, and physically—and sitting at my parent’s kitchen table I knew I had reached my limit.
Overwhelmed I put my head down on the table as the tears started falling.
I hadn’t been crying for more than a minute or two, when the door to my parent’s bedroom opened and out walked my mom. How is it that mom’s have a sixth sense that they’re needed—especially at 2 AM?
Seeing my tears—which didn’t come all that often—my mom knew I had reached my breaking point and sat down ready to work.
For the next half hour, she helped me cut, glue, frame, and add labels to my pieces.
It didn’t matter that in a couple of hours her day would begin. That laundry and getting siblings off to school and my 5-year-old brother, among other things, would all require her attention. At 2 in the morning none of that mattered. All that mattered was that I needed her help. And at the moment, boy did I need it!
My mom stepping in at 2 AM was just how she rolled. She could have stepped in at 5, 7 or 10 PM, but that wasn’t her style.
You would have never found my mom doing something we were supposed to do for us—probably because there were 7 kids. She was a firm believer in that we had to work for what we wanted. If we wanted a good grade, then we needed to put in the hours studying. If we wanted something, we’d needed to earn the money.
She saw the value in us figuring things out and the sense of accomplishment that came with completing a project or doing something we didn’t think we could do.
This didn’t mean that she would never help. In fact, she helped quite a bit. She encouraged and cheered us from the sidelines while we worked. She was there when we had questions or couldn’t figure something out. And, when we’d given our best effort and we were still behind or stuck or just needed an extra pair of hands, there she was. Something I was extremely grateful for that morning.
With her small help what I needed to do no longer seemed unmanageable. I knew I could it. By the time my final rolled around, the projects were done. Showering on the other hand did not happen—even though she always told me not to skip the shower because you always feel better after a shower.
When she didn’t jump in at the first sign of struggles, my mom was teaching me more that I originally. She was teaching me—and all my siblings—to be successful in the real world. And teaching us that lesson was worth giving up her sleep.