I get grouchy this time of year. Growing up in London, I was spoiled by the transformation that spring brings to that part of the world. Suddenly the streets are shining in the bright sunlight after months of dismal rain, and the flowers go bonkers. Wisteria, daffodils and other colorful gems sprouting from every stoop and windowsill.

Here in Boston the story is a little different. Cold. Frost till June. A few brave yellow daffodils here and there, but mainly inchworms eating up the leaves that are frantically trying to bud after six months of arctic weather.

The kids go crazy this time of year. Finally they can actually play on the playgrounds, walk the streets without getting frostbite, jump on a trampoline, play their sports outdoors. But here they shiver in their shorts until well into June.

In the summertime, life changes dramatically for both them AND for us. Isn’t it heavenly to get their little paws off those Wii games/ X-Boxes/ remote controls/ mouses and watch them running around, getting out of breath, PLAYING WITH EACH OTHER?

In the summer, there is much less mother guilt. The kids can be independent without being glued to an electronic device.

Interestingly, while we were doing our focus groups out West last year, some mothers complained because the weather is so good the kids never have an excuse to just veg out. Children and parents are supposed to be doing healthy things outdoors 100 % of the time without much room for indoor lazing around. Mothers there said they feel incredibly guilty whenever they hang out indoors.

Hm. They have a point. But, I’ve got to admit, I think I’d prefer that problem…

Sometimes, I feel like I am in a special hell all of my own. I can’t be alone, can I? This hell involves that dream where you are trying to do something, and no matter how hard you try you NEVER succeed: you keep running, or searching, or screaming and yet you make absolutely no progress. None.

I got home from picking my son up at a game yesterday and he noticed his lacrosse gloves were missing. While he was busy punching his bag, tearing at his face, screaming in frustration, I calmly went to the phone and made two calls: one to the school where we’d just been, and one to his school. “Um, have you seen a pair of lacrosse gloves….” I asked sheepishly.

Later that night, I ask him, “So what’s wrong with your cell phone? Let’s make sure we figure that out, because I need to know when to pick you up.” (Meanwhile I’m thinking, thank god for that insurance plan I was duped into buying.)

Hmm. Wait a minute–the cell phone?! Where IS that dratted cell phone? At this point, it’s late. I tell him I’ll look for it in the morning.

This morning, we’re in a rush. He has a new bus driver who turns up two minutes earlier than the old bus driver. That two minutes has turned our lives upside down.

As we head for the door, he grabs his sports bag. “Where’s my other cleat?” he says, mildly freaking out.

“In the living room,” I say, sipping my coffee (where you kicked them off in a fury last night, I don’t say, because I know by now that doesn’t help).

“My helmet? Where’s my HELMET?” he starts screaming.

Missing, that’s where it is. Like all the other things any of you kids ever touch in this household, I wanted to yell. But I didn’t.

Now we have four minutes to get to the bus stop. It takes six minutes to get to the bus stop. I drive 80 miles an hour on the highway. Good thing I’m European. Good thing I like coffee, too.

All this before 7 am this morning.

So… I thought a lot about the Mother’s Day money making machine this year.The commercialism of the event. The way expectations lead to disappointment.

Why?

Because, I have to admit, almost every year I’m just a little disappointed by Mother’s Day. Every year I persist in thinking, oh, maybe I’ll get whisked away for a night! Oh, maybe I’ll get a massage! Hm, maybe we’ll go out for dinner!

It frustrates me becuase I always have very nice, low-key days on Mother’s Day. I get breakfast in bed, I laze around without feeling guilty and then my day goes on as normal. Which is nice. But not much more than nice.

Isn’t nice okay? Why do I expect more than nice? Because of all the ads screaming at us for weeks  beforehand that we deserve something super special, something expensive, something that represents what we really mean to our families.

It’s a bogus expectation.  I want to get back to the basics. Let’s just enjoy our families and be together and forget about all the frou frou.

The Lanyard
By Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

We were on New England Cable News yesterday, promoting the book. At the very end of the interview, Karen Swenson — a drop dead, gorgeous anchor — asked us,  “What’s the best Mother’s Day gift you’ve ever gotten?”

We blanked. (I may have been a little dazzled by Karen’s pearly whites.)

I laughed, widened my eyes, frantically wracked my brain and stalled for time.

I thought to myself, hmmm, I don’t get gifts from my husband (his explanation is that I’m not his mother) … so… do you mean the drawings I get from my kids? And anyway, when IS the last time I’ve been given something special for Mother’s Day?

Then I got home and felt like a total idiot. My kids make me breakfast in bed every Mother’s Day and it’s a treat that I love. It reminds me of the good old days when I used to sleep until 10am.

I sure wish my brain had snapped to attention and I hadn’t been so darn side-tracked by worrying about whether or not my arms looked fat.

We’re having our first feature in the U.K. press and I’m psyched.

Why?

Because I am a faux-Londoner and I want to prove we can be relevant ALL OVER THE WORLD.

I was born in Germany but grew up first in NYC and then in London. I spent 14 years there. Judging by my accent, you might think 14 minutes, not 14 years but I promise, I’m not exaggerating. Every time I go back I wax nostalgic. I remember the alleyways where I got “pissed” with my Adam and the Antz look-alike friends and the High Streets where I shop-lifted lip gloss and black nail polish. (You may be relieved to hear that while I had a bad attitude for a while, I did eventually come around!)

Of course, my kids will do none of this bad stuff, will they, because they will be under lock and key. Here, in the safe American suburbs… right? Please?

Anyway, I’m happy we’ll be heard across the pond. It’s for YOU that I expunged as many “moms” as I could from our text, replacing them with “mother” instead! It’s for my friends from University, and the it- girls from school in London, and the not-it girls too, and all those mums who don’t know me… but share the same joys and challenges.

This morning I open my e-mail and I have 1722 mails. 1721 of them are old ones being re-sent to me by Outlook which has, apparently, gone berzerk.

The bathroom above my kitchen is leaking.

My daughter had two teeth pulled and doesn’t want to go to school.

I have to drop off an assessment at a Special Ed program across town and I’m just about to go into a long meeting.

I have an appointment at the doctors to talk about ADHD with my daughter at 5:30 and I’m supposed to do carpool for my other daughter’s lacrosse practice at 6:00.

We’re going to be on TV again next week and I have roots. (I even feel guilty about writing that one down, it seems so vain in light of everything else). Speaking of hair, did I mention one child of mine had lice last week and I became intimately acquainted with the art of de-lousing? Now that was a learning experience.

I don’t know… I could actually go on some more if I didn’t feel like you are all already yawning and saying to yourselves, so what’s new?

On the way to school this morning, Greta (12) gives me a worried sideways glance as I veer into the bushes while making a turn because I’ve noticed that my iPhone is suddenly busy trying to download 1722  e-mails.

She says, “Mami?”

“Oops. Yes, honey?” I answer, looking up and swerving out of the way of a tree behind those bushes.

“Maybe YOU need a time out.” She’s not being cute. She’s being serious. She’s worried about my sanity.

I got tears in my eyes.

I ran a panel this weekend at the Grub Street writer’s conference in Boston called, Moms Who Write. It was fun looking out over the audience and seeing all these women — most with little kids at home, and two who were pregnant — and watching their rapt faces. They soaked up all the information, eager to hear how to balance a life too short on time and too full of passions.

I felt pretty darn old among that group of bright-eyed women. Old in the sense of experienced. I’ve been about as low as low can get in terms of parenting. I have scraped poop off the walls. I have deloused my daughter (this just last week, by the way, in between the five interviews and another TV shoot!). I have cried in frustration more times that I would care to admit. I have raced across the desert with a child with 103 degree fever certain that he would die in my arms (I had no idea that fever this high is not a biggie in infants…!). At this point, what haven’t I experienced with my three kids?

It felt great to give hope to these women. To say: yes, you can do it if you want to! You can carve out a life for yourself and still be a great mom. You will sometimes want to pull your hair out, but who doesn’t? Life is by no means perfect, but it’s our responsibility to make it as good as it can be, not only for our families, but for US too.

When life throws something unexpected in a mother’s path, it’s amazing how they react.

I was really thrown for a loop this week when an unexpected crisis hit home.

1. At first, I was so stunned I didn’t even know how I would get through it… I felt it was my burden to bear and it seemed waaaaay too heavy for me to handle.
2. Then I was sad. I cried. I was mourning for the dream I had for my children that would not come true. I worried about the future.
3. I called my husband (who was away on business) and was thankful that I was not alone.
4. Then, I got angry. Why was this happening to her? To us? To me?
5. The truth is, I also felt guilty. Why? Because I was mad about how much time this would take away from my life– time when I could be doing something I liked instead of putting out fires.
6. Soon I got into pitbull mode: I started gathering information. I fired off letters. I went online. I called my friends.
7. Hmmm … I started to feel better. There were options. They weren’t all bad.
8. I talked to friends some more.
9. Finally, just a few days after feeling devastated, I started to actually feel hopeful. I realized, once again, that life as a mother is unpredictable and that we are much, much stronger than we think.

So my point is really that mothers deal with difficulties and disappointments all the time. They want what’s best for their kids. It’s normal for us to feel confused, overwhelmed, even a bit angry about how much life saps our energy.

And then, we get it together–we rally! We work toward finding solutions and we take a step forward.

Little by little, we try to fix what is broken. And if we can’t fix it, we learn to live with it the best we can.

Yesterday was a very difficult day. I got some bad news about one of my children, and I sat in the office of her school and cried like a ten year old.

I couldn’t help thinking about the irony of publishing this book for moms — about how important it is for us to take our own needs seriously — and then be faced with a crisis that will require years and years of research and advocacy for my littlest. We all face hurdles, some big and some small, in this journey through parenthood. So what do the bigger hurdles teach us?

When our children struggle, they need our attention and our energy more than ever. Where do we find the time and will to put in all this “extra” work when our days are already absolutley crammed full?

How do we do it? It’s not magic: we just do it. We make it happen. We fit it in. Something else gives, but we make it work. And of course, this is where it REALLY helps if — as individuals, as women not moms – we feel strong. I know that the incredible happiness I get from my work and my art, and the small time-outs I take for myself as often as I can, will help me face this challenge with positivity and energy.