Mothers and Time

Featured Song: Watercolour Ponies, by Wayne Watson, from the 1987 album of the same name.

Today is Mother’s Day, 2009. It is, I have heard, one of the busiest days for telephone traffic of nearly any other day of the year.

Some recollections of mothers are, sadly, not positive. For those people for whom this is true, I express my condolences. I myself had a childhood that was made more enjoyable by the closeness I had with my parents, and it was my mother who held the household together. She loved we three children deeply, and was very selfless in her care. I am grateful for the life she provided for us, and love her all the more for it.

From the point of view of being a parent, I have learned many of those things about children and parenting that I believe she told me once I would understand “some day”. And one of those things is the relative speed at which life seems to run as an adult compared to the time it took to pass when I was a child. I posted here about the tendency to “turn around” and suddenly finding that the early years of your children has come and gone in a flash of time. It seems like not such a long time since my two children were babies; about twenty years later, they are both in college and facing the future of their own adult lives.

For a mother, then, there is the sweetness of holding a baby, the joy of playing with the young child, the busy time of handling their school years, the even faster pace of high school, and then they are gone. Your relationship is changed, and although still parent to child, it now (hopefully) takes on some of that of “friend”.

To the mothers in the world, living and past, I dedicate today’s song. Wayne Watson’s lyrics give a picture of a just a small aspect of the life of raising children.

There are watercolour ponies
On my refrigerator door
And the shape of something I don’t really recognize
Brushed with careful little fingers
And put proudly on display
A reminded to us all of how time flies

Seems an endless mound of laundry
And a stairway laced with toys
Gives a blow by blow reminder of the war
That we fight for their well-being
For their greater understanding
To impart a holy reverence for the Lord

But baby, what will we do
When it comes back to me and you
They look a little less like little boys every day
Oh, the pleasure of watchin’ the children growin’
Is mixed with a bitter cup
Of knowin’ the watercolour ponies
Will one day ride away

And the vision can get so narrow
As you view thru your tiny world
And little victories can go by with no applause
But in the greater evaluation
As they fly from your nest of love
May they mount up with wings as eagles for His cause

But baby, what will we do
When it comes back to me and you
They look a little less like little boys every day
Oh, the pleasure of watchin’ the children growin’
Is mixed with a bitter cup
Of knowin’ the watercolour ponies
Will one day ride away