Margaret is sitting on the back porch. Her favorite rocker. A good book. A cool morning in early May. She lays the book in her lap for a moment. A mourning dove sends out a familiar soft coo in the distance.

As she looks down at her hands, the skin slightly wrinkled, she cannot help but see her mama’s hands. The hands that held her over 70 years ago. The hands that changed her diapers. The hands that were firm to correct her and tender to caress her. The hands that worked at sewing, cooking, cleaning, fixing, and gardening.

She hears the screech of the screen door as it opens. She looks up and smiles at the sleepy face of her granddaughter. Little Mindy is the spitting image of her mother at this age.

“Hey there sleepy head. Come over here and sit in Grandma’s lap.”

Mindy is almost too big for lap sitting. She’s ten. Wavy brown hair. Brown eyes. She backs up to the rocker clinching her blanket around her, nudges herself up and leans back against Grandma’s shoulder.

“What’cha doing out here,” she asks.

“Oh, just reading a little bit. I like the quiet of the morning. I think better out here when the house is still.”

“What’cha thinking about.”

Margaret smiles, kisses her on the top of the head, and gives her a little squeeze.

“I was thinking about my mama. You know, Mother’s Day is coming.”

Without looking up, Mindy asks her, “What’s it like to be a mother?”

“Oh, child! That’s a big question for such a little girl.”

“Do you think I’ll be a mom one day?”

“Probably so.”

“Well, I wanna know what it’s like.”

Every now and then a moment presents itself. Like a small window, opening to let the fresh air inside. Like a lost treasure that shows up out of nowhere. A tender heart asking questions about the great mysteries of life.

“You really want to know?”

“Yes ma’am.”

Margaret takes a long breath and says a tiny prayer.

“Being a mother is one of the greatest joys and most demanding jobs on earth. There’s nothing else you will ever do that will give you as much satisfaction, and nothing else that will ever break your heart so completely.”

Margaret knows, in two brief sentences, that she probably has said too much. But that’s just how it came out. The little girl in her lap cannot possibly grasp what it’s like to be a mother. She probably should have said, “It’s wonderful to be a mother,” and let it go at that.

But she has never held back when her children asked hard questions. She’s always thought it better to be truthful rather than to sugar coat her words, especially when it comes to things that matter.

Her own mother has been gone for nearly 30 years. There was no one whom Margaret admired more in this life. The two of them had just barely begun to share life together. It was more than just a mother and daughter relationship. For the first time her mother was allowing her to know what her life was really like.

Her mama had a hard life as a little girl. Poor. Orphaned. Raised by foster parents who thought of her and her brother as farm hands to be used rather than children to be loved.

Margaret did not have the pleasure of knowing her grandparents on her mother’s side. She always wondered about them, but never asked too many questions, because when she did, she was told that she was too young and not to worry about it.

Which is why she wants to be honest with Mindy.

Motherhood is not for the faint of heart. She discovered that her own mother’s kindness was born out of sheer determination. It was not a natural gift. Her mother was treated unfairly. She was spoken to with harsh words and made to bear burdens that no child should have been made to carry.

But she rose above all that. She chose to become different.

One night over pie and coffee, she said to Margaret, “I had every right to be mad at the world. I was bitter for a long time. But when you came along, I don’t know, something happened. I knew I had to be the mother to you that I never had.”

For the first time Margaret saw a strength in her mama that she had failed to appreciate. Most of her life she took her kindness for granted and now there was no way for her to tell her how much she loved her for that.

Margaret, for sure, had her own hardships. Divorced at a young age with two small children. Making ends meet with two jobs. She married a wonderful man in her late twenties. Another child. Tragedy struck. Her son died in a car wreck his senior year of high school. A wound she still carries. And her own daughter, Mindy’s mother, is a single mom.

Margaret knows all too well that the life of a mother can be complicated.

Yet, she is grateful. She holds on to the example of her mama’s strength. She treasures the tender years of raising her own kids. So many good memories, memories which she cherishes more than the disappointments that she holds inside.

Courage. That’s what she associates with being a mother more than anything. It’s a brave soul who bears children into an unforgiving world. Her friend Betty has a son who is in jail. Her cousin, Inez, has a daughter who hasn’t visited or called home in the last ten years. Sandra is raising her daughter’s two children because she can’t hold a job and is too depressed to be of any use to them.

You never know how life is going to turn out. One day the sun shines and all is right with the world. The next day, the storms come, and you wonder if you’ll make it through.

A mother has to keep things in perspective. You take the good with the bad, and do your best to keep your chin up. You forge on.

Margaret is a person who smiles a lot. If you met her, you’d never know about the sorrows she carries.

One of her closest friends, who does know, asked her one day, “How do you fake it so well.”

Margaret smiled. “Fake it? Honey, there’s nothing fake about the peace I feel. Whatever’s happened in my life, I trust that there are Reasons for it that are way beyond my understanding. I’ve done the best I can. I’m content with that.”

Margaret knows that she’s not a perfect mother in spite of what her children may think. Motherhood is not about perfection. Her life has been far from perfect.

Being a mom is about loving those in your care. It’s about staying strong when life gets tough. It’s about soaking up the joy that comes your way, like this little one sitting in her lap right now.

Mindy shuffles inside her blanket. “Is it really that hard, Grandma?”

Margaret squeezes her tight.

“It is, darling, but you’ll find out one day that it’s all worth it.”