I began the steep climb and with each step my mind checked off my safety items: rubber gloves, mask, hair tied back tightly and a baseball cap for extra caution. Multiple trash bags tucked into the back pocket of my jeans, two rags and some multi-purpose cleaner were my arsenal. I hesitated for a moment and a step creaked urging me on toward my final destination.

Reaching the top step I quickened my pace lest I falter in my determination. The doorway that loomed before me opened to a brilliant stream of sunshine and for a moment I was lulled into believing that what lie beyond that opening was less terrible than my mind thought it would be. Suddenly, I heard a crunching sound as my foot reached beyond the threshold and the fantasy was shattered! My heart stopped and my breathing felt shallow as my mind whirled around the possibilities that could have caused such a sound.

There before me lie the debris, clothing and leftover food items of a tweenage girl. She was the same tweenage girl that had once been my mischievous toddler and before that, my chubby baby. And, yes, I mean tweenage. It’s the latest term to describe those budding years ranging from 10 to 12 where a child is no longer a child, but isn’t quite a teenager. For mom, the tweenager can be shocking, loving and confusing all within a matter of minutes. Not to mention a slob, which is what I was facing today.

I know all about the responsibility that I have to teach her about keeping her room clean, her clothes taken care of and her bed made. I’ve calmly explained it, other times shouted it, created consequences for the failure to make it happen, screamed, cried and finally, come up here to do it myself. You might say that I’m giving in. Failing to keep her nose to the grind and teach her a lesson. And all of that is probably true, but then, there is something else.

While tweenage is difficult, I foresee teenage to be something more of a challenge. Her room might look worse then and if we fight about it, she’ll have the ability to spirit herself away somewhere far from me where she can fume about all the years that I’ve been nagging her about her room. She’ll stop talking to me about the things that make her sad, mad and generally confused and she’ll completely convince herself that I don’t love her.

And there, lies the real reason that I’m here all decked out in my own version of a HAZMAT suit to clean her room. I’ll clean it because I love her and having it clean is more important to me than it is to her. Maybe some day, when she has her own place it will mean something to her to see things clean and orderly. She’ll certainly remember when I taught her how to clean a room, she’ll remember the times that I, in frustration, sometimes cleaned it with her and also the times when I just went and did it by myself and said nothing. Those times when, instead of choosing to have a brawl, I just did something to show her that I love her.

It won’t be the clean room that matters to her all that much, but it will be one less time that I nag her about it, and that has some meaning. She might not put all the pieces together now or even when she’s a teenager, but some day, it will occur to her that I could have nagged more, I could have yelled more and instead, at least sometimes, I just chose to clean her room.

I won’t give up trying to get her to do it on her own. That would be shirking my responsibilities, but every once in awhile, I’ll don this ridiculous outfit, make my way up the intimidating staircase and begin the job of lovingly removing unidentifiable goopy stuff off of her carpet. Soon enough, whether she keeps it clean or not, she’ll have her own place. I hope she’ll invite me for a visit. When she does, it won’t matter to me if it’s clean or if it isn’t. I’ll remember that I did my best to show her love and we’ll have that to show for it, which has a lot more mileage than a clean bedroom.

I think that’s what love’s got to do with it.

All of this comedic chaos is converging on me as another Mother’s Day is approaching and I’m wondering if I couldn’t use a view my own mother with a little more humor. I know that I’m not alone when I say that my relationship with my mother has been, at the very least, complex and rarely humorous.

I have come to understand that I need humor in my day to keep the balance. As often as I’ve wished for a rulebook or instruction manual for mothering, I’ve also spent just as much time being grateful that there isn’t. It just never occurred to me that my mother would have had any doubts of her own. She’s my mother. Isn’t she the source of all things? She isn’t allowed to have faults? Looking at it from the point of view of a child is a little different.

Think about it. Our children BELIEVE in us! They expect that we’ll have an answer for them when they don’t have one of their own and this continues into adulthood. The problem is that we don’t have all the answers and we’re bound to disappoint our beloved children when they realize that we are as human as they are. Isn’t that the core of most of the difficult mother-child relationships?

It hadn’t occurred to me until now that my mother spent just as many sleepless nights wondering if she did the right thing. As a young adult, I could have made a list of all the things that I thought that she did wrong and maybe I even had answers for how I thought that she should have behaved. I never accounted for the fact that she did the best that she could. She mothered with all of the knowledge and ability that she had. I wasn’t abused or mistreated, but for a very long time, I thought that she could have done a better job.

So here it is, another Mother’s Day and I’m projecting into the future. I see my children and I realize all the areas where I could have been a better mother and I’m realizing how hurt I will be when they remind me of that. I’ve loved them and wanted all of the best for them and basically, done the best that I could. It isn’t perfect and no matter how much I wish to be perfect, I never will be. Won’t I want some understanding from my children when they get to sit in the adult seat?

Do we ever take the time to consider how young or how old our mother might have been? What was she experiencing in her life that would have impacted her ability to pay attention or care for us? What were her needs?

My own mother was only 21 when I was born. When I look back, I put enormous expectations on what I think she should have been, but I would never expect so much from someone so young now. It takes the doubts that you experience being a mother to appreciate how scared and uncertain your own mother must have been when she stood in the shoes that you now stand in. I can honor her now, let go of all that baggage of expectation that I’ve carried around and allow her to be all that she is. A wonderful, beautiful, magical human being and… mother.

When I was in my twenties I exercised every day and I was very fit. I hoped that maker’s of movies would decide to make the next superhero movie a Wonder Woman movie. I was convinced that, with a little help from Bausch & Lomb in order to get blue eyes, I could be the next Linda Carter!

Well, Hollywood never called and suddenly (over a ten year period) four children appeared in my life. My hopes of ever being Wonder Woman were dashed, but a strange thing occurred. Slowly, each month, each year I began to develop real life super powers!

One of the very first changes is the super power hearing. You’re able to hear small children getting into trouble even when you have the blender going and they’re outside! Your eyes open wide and you cock your head to the side to listen carefully and sure enough you can hear them whispering and conspiring through the walls about their devious plans!

There are some very powerful aspects of this super hearing. The first is not only are you able to hear every wayward crinkle and snap that they make, but you are also keenly aware that silence means trouble. You’re not actually able to leap over tall buildings in a single bound in order to get to where they are, but woe it is to anyone that gets in your path as you’re running!

Thankfully, the super hearing can be turned off. Wonder Woman needed to go to her home of Amazon women every once in awhile to restore herself. A mom just develops the skill to tune it all out sometimes.

There were always some great scenes in that show where Wonder Woman would lift a car or tear open a wire gate with her super strength. Who knew that I’d be able to roll giant boulders that were crushing a child’s leg or push a 125 pound dog that had decided to sit on a baby?

Wonder Woman could use her super vision to see through buildings or sometimes she could even see people a great distance away. As it turns out, I have this power too! I should have been ready for this one though, since I always thought that my own mother had eyes behind her head. It drives my children crazy, but it’s always worth a good laugh when they notice that I have caught them at something that they thought I’d never be able to see!

Just like Wonder Woman I stand up for right and wrong among my tribe. I fight for the things I believe in and teach my children to cheer for an underdog if they have the chance.

I can’t remember if Wonder Woman had a super sense of smell, but there never has been a mother that couldn’t smell a dirty diaper from a fabulously far distance. Even better is that this sense of smell picks up smoke faster than a smoke detector can go off, or the smell of a gas leak or even when the pet has had an accident in the house. It’s a very handy super power.

It seems that mother’s have been given a few things that even Wonder Woman didn’t get to have. For example, my kisses have the magic power to make tears disappear and to diminish the pain of booboos and bellyaches. My hugs go a long way toward calming my children’s cries of injustice and just one of my words can either brighten or destroy an entire day for those that I love!

So I’m not going to be the next Linda Carter. I’ll never even get to wear that nifty suit unless I have the nerve to put it on for a Halloween party, but as it turns out, just like every other mother that I know, I’m wonder woman anyway. Oh, and if I ever wear that suit on Halloween, I’d develop the power to make my children moan, groan and roll their eyes to the back of their heads!

You become accustomed to the attention as you answer questions about when you’re due, what you’re having and whether or not you have the room set up with a theme. You take classes and learn about breast feeding, car seats, diapers and what you should have at home to receive baby. You have a baby shower where all of the gifts are addressed with your name and all the time you are unaware that you’re slipping further and further away from an identity that you call your own.

The day of birth finally arrives and in an instant everything changes. You don’t realize it at first. In fact it could take years before you become fully aware of it, but in that instant of birth, when your name becomes mom you’ve become a person that is more needed than you’ve ever been in your life and less seen than anyone else in the world.

Your spouse, parents and friends may visit you just after the arrival of baby and they’ll begin to ask you, “So how does mom feel?”. As the years roll on, baby goes to pre-school and you’ll meet other mother’s in the hallway and they’ll say, “Are you Ben’s mom?”. Still later, baby goes to school and the invitations to birthday parties begin and you find yourself calling for those RSVP’s and leaving messages that say, “Hi, this is Eric’s mom calling about the party.”

All of the adorable crafts and cards brought to you in love by your children will all be addressed to mom. You’ll consider them treasures and proudly show them off.

Probably the most disturbing of all is that your spouse may also fall into the trap of forgetting your name. For years you may not have noticed that he addressed you as “hon” or “sweetheart” or any number of affectionate names. These are all terrific, but when he starts to talk to you as if he is talking through the children, you feel distinctly concerned. He may say, “Does mommy know where Gillian’s shirt is?” The moment that this occurs may be your first clue that your name is missing.

One day, eleven years and four children later, I woke up, looked in the mirror and said my name. It was foreign, difficult and just plain weird. I hadn’t realized how much I missed it! I love being mom, but I knew at that moment that the most important thing that I could do for my kids was not to forget myself.

The first thing that I did was ask my husband to call me Cheryl. Hon is nice, but Cheryl suits me much better at this point in my life. I don’t think he likes it because he so rarely uses my name. It has been a difficult change for him, but I think he sees me more and I love to hear him say it. Of course, my children don’t call me Cheryl, but when I meet other mothers I have committed to asking for their name and making my best effort to remember it. When I reply to those birthday party invitations I’m careful to say, “Hi, this is Cheryl, Eric’s mother.”

I’ve found my missing name! I have to remember that it took me eleven years to notice that it was gone, so I’m gentle with myself in rediscovering it. Your name is the way that you’ve addressed yourself for a long time. It’s important! I might research the history of my name or the meaning in numerology, or possibly read about people that have shared my name or the derivative of it now that I’m rediscovering it for myself. This path of rediscovery is fun.

I know that I’ll always be mom. I never want to stop hearing that name! I know also that I’m still a loving wife, but that being Cheryl keeps me from being invisible and helps me to love them all without losing myself.

If you’re a mom and your name is missing, make 2008 the year of rediscovering it and at the same time, rediscovering you.