This Sunday, we recognize the women who gave us birth. We celebrate our relationships with our own children. We thank all the women in the “village” that has been our life for the contributions they have made to create the person we are today.
Those of us who are mothers accept homemade cards, enjoy brunches, and hopefully, get a much-deserved day off. While enjoying said break from reality, here are few books celebrating all things Mom that are worth checking out:
“Porn for New Moms” from the Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative:
Don’t be alarmed by the title – there is no real porn to be found between these covers! This tongue-in-cheek tome showcases photos of (fully clothed) men doing typical mom jobs, and features captions such as, “No, no, sit down! I’ll do the dishes. After nine and a half months of pregnancy, 26 hours of labor, and 18 stitches, you don’t have to do a darn thing around here!”
“The Moms’ Book: For the Mom Who’s Best at Everything” by Alison Maloney
This clever little handbook is chock-full of tips for moms on just about every topic. Some are practical such as “Easy Halloween Costumes”, and “Rainy Day Play”.
Others are intended to illicit a chuckle, such as the chapter offering advice on how to wake stragglers up in the morning, which includes my personal favorite, method #6,
“Go out the front door and slam it loudly so they think you are leaving without them. (This only works with younger children. Teenagers will simply breathe a sigh of relief and go back to sleep.)”
“Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood– The Good, The Bad, and the Scary” by Jill Smokler:
This collection of original essays takes a look at the so-called underbelly of motherhood. It exposes things that most moms would never admit, but feel on a daily basis, and leaves those of us that are occasionally less than perfect feeling a little less alone in our shortcomings.
It begins with the “Scary Mommy Manifesto” which readers are encouraged to recite before continuing on to read the book. The manifesto offers such sage pieces of advice as,
“I shall not compete with the mother who effortlessly bakes from scratch, purees her own baby food, or fashions breathtaking costumes from tissue paper. Motherhood is not a competition. The only ones who lose are the ones who race the fastest.”
And, “I shall never ask any woman whether she is, in fact, expecting. Ever.”
My favorite “mom books” however, are the ones we share with our little ones. Here are a couple of beloved classics that capture the love shared between a mother and her child:
“The Kissing Hand” by Audrey Penn:
In this sweet story, we meet Chester Raccoon, who is nervous about his upcoming first-ever day of school. His mother teaches him about the “kissing hand”. She kisses his palm, and carefully tucks his fingers around the kiss so that he can carry her love with him to school.
He in turn, gives her a kissing hand also, so that she won’t be too lonely while he is away, and any mother who has ever sent her first-born off to the first day of school knows how handy one of those would be.
“Love You Forever” by Robert Munsch
I know there are some who don’t care for this book, but I still can’t read it without crying. Maybe it is because I first read it shortly after my own mother’s passing, but whatever it is, it touches me every time.
The story follows a mother who, as her child grows, sneaks into his room at night and sings him this song, “I’ll love you forever, I’ll Like you for always, As long as I’m Living, my baby you’ll be”.
By the end of the book, we see a fully-grown man sneaking into his white-haired mother’s room, cradling her, and singing the same song, but with this ending: “As long as I’m living, my mommy you’ll be.”
I can’t think of any words a mother would rather hear.
