It’s Mother’s Day.   Today in Miss Maggs Love Kitchen, my lovely Bruce did the love cooking.  We had wonderful eggs benedict with an amazing lemony hollandaise sauce.  Yum.  3 egg yolks;  1 tbsp. lemon juice; 2 sticks of butter; 1 tbsp. cream, dash of cayenne, emulsified.   And as always in the Love Kitchen, the love is the most important ingredient.  In our home, we love everyone with our food.    Had a bad day?  You must need some risotto with wild mushrooms.   Dreary and rainy outside?   Sunny Butternut Squash soup.    Need a date night?   Rosemary lamb chops with bacon wrapped asparagus.   Love, love, love.

This Mother’s Day my beautiful girl is away from me, in Virginia working hard.   I’m sure there’s nowhere she would rather be today than with me.   My thoughts today, however, turn to other Mothers.   My dear friend who lost her young daughter last year; how heavy must her heart be today.

My daughter’s best friend, Tara, is a young mother at 25 of two boys, 4 and 2.   Through most of my life I have looked upon these young mothers with disdain.  Who can’t be responsible enough to avoid pregnancy at such a young age with no clear father figures in the children’s lives.  I have regarded these young mothers as foolish, and felt little sympathy for them.  Through these last 5 years with Tara though, I have begun to re-evaluate this narrow mindset.   Tara is an amazing mother to her 2 boys.  She breathes her young soul into them and pours motherly love into every corner as if it were melted butter.   There is a picture of  Tara, with Cris, 4 and Gabi, 2, buried in the sand under a pier.  She is beaming.  The boys are in varied poses of boyness; little Cris the older boy, hamming for the photograph, loving the sand on his skin.   Gabi, the rascally wild 2 year old, clearly talking and poking his brother, unaware that there even is a photograph being taken.  It is a radiant photograph of family, one that would please Tara’s grandmother deeply.

I have deep admiration for Tara.  Being 25, single with two children can be unrelentingly isolating.   She is a normal girl only to other single mothers her age.   I know that somewhere inside her is the young 25 Tara.  The one who goes dancing, goes to college, goes to the grocery store and buys only what she wants.  That Tara wants to travel and have a two seater car, and a boyfriend who doesn’t have to “understand” what it’s like to love someone with small children.  She wants to be loved by herself, only for what she is.  This, I think, is the cross of the young single mother.   When I see her without the children, laughing with people her own age, my heart aches for her youth.   This is not what Tara sees when she looks in the mirror, though.

Tara sees only the mother.   She sees the woman who would jump in front of a car to shield her boys.   The woman who will someday go into a school and fight the principal for her children’s education.    I think Tara is a beautiful girl, but what she sees when Tara looks in the mirror is much more beautiful.   She sees her purpose and her joy in mothering.  She sees the selfless Tara, the one who wants to give them everything.   I have changed my mind about young single mothers.   They, actually, are the real mothering warriors of us all.   They tackle societal bias, low income, and a system designed to fail them.   And they love, love, love in the purest sense.   Tara has always regarded me as the perfect mother.  But this Mother’s Day, it is my sweet Tara who is my hero.