Once when I was in elementary school, a boy I went to Sunday School with called me a “Momma’s Boy”. My mother was our teacher and apparently I showed her a bit too much affection. I remember being really offended, like loving my mother was something I should be embarrassed by. I felt like this through most of my adolescent life. Junior high, even into high school, the idea of being seen with my mother in public, God forbid seen acting like I liked her, was mortifying. I wish I could go back to the Me from these angsty, self-conscious years of my life and punch myself in the face-- not because of the shirts from Hot Topic or my obsession with Pokémon-- but because I didn’t give my mother the respect that she deserved.

It took me moving away from home to realize how much I loved my mother, how much she did for me, how much I should have appreciated her (her, along with the rest of my family). It took me having to make eggs for dinner four days a week to appreciate her home cooking, doing my laundry and dishes and making my bed and grocery shopping to be thankful for everything I never realized my mother even did. I text my mom whenever I buy toothpaste or shampoo because when I was 13 I never realized being an adult and being away from home and my mother meant having to get these stupid things that I need to be a human being.

People don’t like to talk about how difficult college is. People look back on college fondly, saying it was the best time of their lives, how they wish they could go back and do it again, but when you’re in college this is far from how you feel. College feels like a pressure cooker most of the time. You’re burdened by more work than you’ve ever been exposed to, the social pressures are unlimited, you have nowhere to call your own except a crappy dorm room which you aren’t even alone in most of the time. You’re expected to juggle work, school work, extracurriculars, friends, parties and so many more things it isn’t even worth listing. Sometimes when this all becomes too much I think to myself “I just want my mom.” The hardest part about college is that you’re supposed to deal with these things all while being away from the support system that you’ve been exposed to since birth. Don’t get me wrong, college is a blast and I’m stoked to be here-- most of the time-- and the times when I’m not I just really want to see my mom.

But I think that one of the reasons it’s so important to move away from home at some point during your entrance into adulthood is that it makes you appreciate all of these things that your mother (or your father or your sister) does for you. I don’t think it makes you love them anymore but it makes you realize that the love is there.

I absolutely take advantage of all of the things my mother does for me and it really bothers me that I might not be able to give all of these things back to her before I get the chance. Money, clothes, care, comfort, don’t even begin to scrape the surface. I propose the measly Mother’s Day be turned into at least a week.