Dear Dr. Laura,
I am a 41-year-old mom of 3 amazing boys ages 14, 12, and 8, and am BLESSED beyond words to be my husband’s girlfriend and my kids' mom. I owe this in part to you. I've been a listener and HUGE FAN since before my kidlets were born. But in a VERY LARGE WAY I also owe this to my own mother – who was "Her Kids' Mom" since before you were even on the radio to guide and encourage her.
When my mom was a little girl she got a kidney infection that the doctors said would kill her. Thankfully, she survived. She believes she was saved because she was meant to do something special and important with her life: to give life to and raise my brother and I.
When I was born, my parents had very little money, and my mom went back to work when I was 6 weeks old. That lasted less than a week. At the young age of 21, even without "Mother Laura", my mom had the good sense to figure out that a day care worker could NEVER replace a mother's love, so she quit her job and stayed home to take care of me. Somehow she and my dad figured out how to make it work.
Needless to say my mom has done a whole lot of things with her life that the world would label "special and important". When my brother and I started school, she went back to earn a nursing degree, and began her career as a surgical nurse. Like you, she got up at 4:30 every morning so she could work an 8 hour shift in the hospital and be home by the time my brother and I got off the bus in the afternoons. The rest of her days were spent feeding us and schlepping us to our activities. Both my brother and I ended up graduating from our state university with honors in Mechanical Engineering.
A couple of weeks ago my parents took my 8-year-old to a football game at the university that I attended. My son, who thinks of me only as his "mommy" – which is perfectly OK with me - was fascinated to be reminded that I had gone to school there too, not just his daddy, and had gotten a degree in Mechanical Engineering, just like his daddy. He was also fascinated to hear that I used to have a JOB in engineering, and he wondered when and why I had stopped working. She told him, I had stopped working when his big brother was born so that I could be home to take care of him. And then she added this: "Why do you think you have so much sunshine?" Sunshine is what we call my 8-year-old’s face when it lights up with his amazing smile. "It’s because for your whole life, when you woke up from your naps, your mommy has always been there to give you a hug and tell you that she loves you."
What an amazing Grandma…what an amazing mom…and what an amazing legacy she has left our family. She has truly done something special and important with her life.
With much love and respect,
Jennifer
