My Mom Likes to Make Me Cry

A few days after Adam and I had arrived home from our trip to Boston he and I spent the evening cooking a giant pot of spaghetti sauce and pasta for the three of us.

After we ate, we threw the giant pots and our plates in the sink and spent some quality time in the living room as we do every night after dinner playing with Aidan.  We eventually gave Aidan his bath, read him his book and put him to bed.

Adam turned on the TV and I figured I better tackle the dishes from that evening's meal so they would be done when I woke up next morning.

I walked in to the kitchen and I looked at the pile of dishes awaiting me.   I slaved scrubbing the pots and bread pan and dried them and put them away.  I returned to the sink looked at the remaining plates and thought "Thank God I can put these in the dishwasher."  Then I remembered.  The day we left for Boston, I loaded up the dishwasher and used up the last of the dish washer detergent.  I was going to have to wash them by hand. Rough life, right?  But imagine this, it's 11 pm and you are just ready to get in your bed, the last thing you want to do is scrub spaghetti sauce and Parmesan off of a pile of plates and now glasses that have been submerged in the same water. 

Just to make sure, I leaned down, opened the cabinet below the sink and there it was.  The bright, shiny, new bottle of dish washer detergent my mom had bought while I was gone.  And I started to cry. I know it sounds so silly and you probably are wondering why I would cry because my mom bought me dish washer detergent.  But it's not about the dish washer detergent. It's because my mom does things for me just because she loves me and to some they seem so little, but to me they are huge.   

It wasn't just the dish washer detergent. It was the closets she organized, the laundry she had completely caught up, the rugs she had vacuumed and the floors she had washed, it was the clean linens on all the beds and the meal she had my dad prepare for us so we wouldn't have to worry about it when we got off the plane.  It's the way I smile to myself when I do something I know I learned from her.  The way she sounds when she tells me I'm a great mom and that she loves me.  She makes me cry because she's the best.
So I picked up the phone and even though I knew she would be in bed, called her to tell her "Thanks".  For loving me enough to buy me dish washer detergent so I wouldn't have to wash my dishes by hand.   And for making me cry so much my husband laughed at me for 10 minutes.