My sisters and I really won Christmas last year. Buying for your parents is hard—they have all the stuff! You’re so poor! What is a decanter!—and we have sadly passed the blessed days of the homemade they-have-to-love-it days (RIP macaroni art, gone before your time).

But when my aunt and uncle told us they could convert old tapes into DVDs somehow using technology/magic, we nailed it. Et voila, le perfect Christmas gift for our mother: literal hours of video of us as babies and toddlers, making forts and messes, celebrating a seemingly endless array of birthdays with various cousins dressed head to toe in Laura Ashley’s 1980s-4ever collection, and generally toddling about being prettttty adorable, if I may say so myself (And I can. This is my reflective, overly-emotional Mother’s Day think-piece and don’t you forget it young lady.).

The worst part about this gift is that my boyfriend has now seen ten minutes of me as a small child trying to identify broccoli as “cah-rots” over and over with tiny infant resolve. The best part is that if you watch the videos with my mum she provides aggressive, sportscaster-like commentary on her own parenting abilities. “Oh Janice, why are you letting them eat those cookies unattended!?! They could choke!!” “What is your father doing letting you put that blanket in your mouth?! That was on the GROUND,” etc. etc. These moments of post-child-rearing mortification are extra hilarious because we’re sitting beside her, all grown up and (relatively) normal/unharmed, floor-blankets and all.

However, the best BEST part is when she sees herself doing something great. I found out from these home vids that my mother, who chose to stop working to take care of us, used to plan and execute a craft project with my sister and I every day when we were little. EVERY. DAY. Even she had to admit, “Nice one, Jan.” There’s also a lot of personalized reading time and letting us choose our own outfits to give us a little three year old sense of agency, and like, do not even get me started on the forts. These glimpses into my childhood are invaluable to me because, tragically, a lot of those memories have been replaced with ones of me being a nightmare “YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME” teenager slamming doors and writing coooool emo song lyrics on my jeans. These videos of my mom in hilarious 80s overalls, way preggo with my little sister and serving out handmade, from scratch, birthday cake to two two year olds who are busy making the cool craft their mom gave them for the afternoon basically say one thing over and over, and it is not “cah-rots”. It is: remember that this is only the tiniest five-minute sliver of your life and look how much this woman is doing for you in it.

I recently got my wisdom teeth out and ended up back in my mother’s care. Homegirl filled the house with pudding and only laughed at me a little when I pulled a full on “David after dentist” in the recovery room. I got mashed potatoes delivered to my bed because I pathetically slurred the words “mazz potata”. And again, this is just the tiniest little snapshot! Holy god, my mother. All mothers. It starts with the whole GIVING BIRTH thing, which, okay, I saw a video once and I don’t want to get into it, I’m sure you know about it, it’s not great, the word ‘tearing’ comes up sometimes and hoooo boy I am not ready to go into it any further, and continues straight on to never stopping taking care of you ever, even if you think you’re done or are in the midst of the worst most emotional teenage garbage. I’ve been getting super into female autobiography lately (coooooool sentence! funnnnn life!), and the one thing that seems universal across the board is that you cannot possibly understand how much your mother cares about you until you have children of your own and your whole brain and heart explode in love and worry both at once. I don’t know if that’s true (Tina Fey said it is, so I bet it is, though.), and I kind of think the concept of “—–‘s Day”s is garbage, but I also think it’s probably not a bad thing to take advantage of the Hallmark directive to celebrate your mother/grandmother/mother-figure/positive strong female influence in your life/you know what I mean this May 13th. It doesn’t need to be flowers or a spa weekend or shoes or a cheesy card or even a super-flattering blog post (hey mom!), just make sure they know how important they are to you. And that you’re sorry about the door-slamming stuff.

~ Monica Heisey