What do you want to be...

OnLy a mother???

That was the question a friend posed to me this evening. While discussing my professional and scholastic ambitions, he was trying to find out my goals in order to offer business advice and help 'open my eyes' to the fact that I could indeed have everything. Everything meaning money, time, opportunities to travel, and so forth.

Sure, it sounds fabulous on the surface, but I have already in two short years of single parenthood learned that try as you might, it just doesn't work that way. "Having everything" always comes at the expense of something.

I've never really thought about how to quantify myself in one or two adjectives, so the question really caught me off guard. However, my response is that I don't want to be only a mother, but I don't want to be anything that causes mother to be an afterthought rather than my major role. I want to be the one to kiss the owies, to butter the toast, to bug her about picking up her shoes. I cherish the hugs she gives me every day when I pick her up from preschool. The time spent wearing silly costumes, playing horsey, finger painting, frosting cupcakes, catching bugs and re-reading the same ridiculous book is so much more than just quietly passing time. Being a mother means helping someone become the person that they will grow up to be. A mother is the most influential person in a child's life. Although it isn't always roses, what other job can have as lasting an impact on the future of another person?

I think Maya Angelou described it perfectly when she said "The entire sum of existence is the magic of being needed by just one person."

The pay may be lousy, the hours unending, and the advancement potential nonexistent, but motherhood is the most important thing in the world. I do not apologize, I do not pretend, I will not cease to cherish that role I play. And when I get tired, I will feel her little arms wrap around my neck as I hear her whisper "I love you mommy," and my joy will be full.