Last night at the back-to-school picnic, a few of us moms looked around for a garbage can.

We were on the front lawn of the neighborhood school where all our kids and a good number of dads sprawled having summer’s last sandwiches and drinks. There wasn’t a trash can to be found.

“We don’t need a trash can because we have moms,” I said, and it was true, each of us with hands full of apple cores and bread crusts, totes of green waste and recyclables, water bottles sweating rivulets inside our stained handbags.

It takes a mother to spread a meal and make it disappear.
It takes a mother to clean up after.
It takes a mother to adapt, undo, invent and start over.
It takes a mother to heal a mother, a sister, a brother and a father, a nation, the world.
A mother to be a mother again.
I’ve given up thinking that the good old boys, with their bully monsters and toys, will get a damn thing done.
It takes a mother to make it better.
A mother first and a mother last in line.
I wish it wasn’t so, and it’s not always.
If you’re a father and you do all this, that’s how good a mother you are.
And I bet you have a sack of trash to prove it.

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If you, your friend, your mother, husband, sister or brother are thinking about joining me at the Rochester Mother’s Plunge, now is the time to commit. If you have the means but not the time, consider funding a full or partial scholarship. I have mothers waiting for a fairy godmother to appear. Email me at kmiller (at) turningwords (dot) com to make a mother’s day.

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