By Kimberly Smith
“Mother knows best” is a phrase I heard all the time growing up. As a young child, I thought of Mom as being the person you would run to after getting hurt to get hugs and kisses. My mom was the one that made the sun shine on a cloudy day, always made sure I brushed my teeth before bed and instilled good ol’ fashion manners in me.
I never thought how all of these “actions” might benefit me in the future. I thought all of those things were just plain terrible and were meant to fully torture me. Oh boy, how a child’s mind thinks.
During my childhood, my siblings and I would climb up trees to see who could go the highest. I would always hear my mother say, “Stop this instant, or you are going to get hurt.” As a teenager, I would arrive home past my curfew and walk in the door to see my mom awake with a worried look on her face. She proceeded to tell me, “One day, you will understand when you have your own kids and have a worried feeling when you don’t know where they are.”
Well, she was right! With four children of my own, three of them in their teenage years, I understand where my mother was coming from 100%. The motherly instinct kicked in, and I want to keep my children safe at all times. I want to know where they are and who they are going to be with whenever they walk out the door. I want to be the first person they call when something is wrong.
What I thought of as “actions” before, I know now were life lessons only a mother a can instill in her children. Now, when my children will not listen to me, I chuckle a little. I hear my mom when I say things like, “You are going to get hurt,” or “One day, you will understand how I feel.”
May is the month when everyone recognizes their mother. We go out to buy her flowers, get the perfect card, take her out for lunch and pamper her for the day. But why wait for a certain day to pamper our mothers? We have 365 days to let them know how much we appreciate all of the advice and guidance we received and still do receive.
Nowadays, I love to talk and laugh at the silly things my siblings and I did as children, as well as listen to my mom’s stories of her childhood and the trouble she got into as kid. After all of that, my mom sits back and says, “Mother knows best.”
Kimberly Smith leads the Community Outreach Team at Health Alliance. She is a mother of one boy and three girls. She enjoys traveling, seeking out locally owned coffee shops and socializing.
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