An Ode to Mothers

Like many other little girls in the early 2000s my sister and I had fallen victim to the Jonas Brothers. Whether it was spending way too long in the magazine aisle at Duane Read reading teen magazines and deciding if the ones with the pull-out Jonas Brothers magazine were worth the $4.99 or sitting in our room listening to songs we illegally downloaded on Limewire, we were obsessed. Of course my sister went for the bad boy middle brother, Joe, while I was more into the younger sensitive type, Nick. Kevin was also part of the band but I’m convinced he was just there for optical symmetry. I’m not quite sure how my sister stumbled upon the information but she found out that on a random October day the Jonas Brothers would be performing at Six Flags of all places. Six Flags was in the state over and about a two hour drive from our house. This was before the smartphone, google map days. It was during those days that any road trip meant the risk of taking one wrong turn, casting the printed out Mapquest directions useless and subsequently trying to make sense of the contradictory directions collected from random pedestrians. With none of this responsibility to bear, my sister ardently begged my mother to take us to six flags on the day of the performance.

After several days of hard work nagging on my sister's part, my mother was still unsure of her decision the morning of the show. That morning we all woke up to an overcast sky and intermittent showers. A quick internet search showed it would be the same gloomy weather in New Jersey, however, sunshine was predicted for the afternoon. Putting her entire trust in this weather report, my sister continued to beg and convince my mother that it made perfectly logical sense to drive to a theme park two hours away in the rain. If nothing else I commend her persistence. At the exact hour that the whole day could have possibly been lost to indecisiveness, my mother reluctantly relented.

On the drive over to pick up my sister's friend, Emily, who also happened to be a fan of the band, a branch from our heavily tree lined block came crashing down onto the roof of our car. I knew for my superstitious mother this was more than just the workings of the stormy day and was a sign from a higher power to rethink her decision. She immediately hit the breaks and took a deep inhale. Being more empathetic towards my mothers constant worry, I had not begged her to take us that day. I secretly wanted to see the concert just as badly as my sister did but I didn’t want to do it at the expense of my mother’s never waning anxiety. It was in this moment as I looked on from the back seat that I saw true fear and doubt in my mothers eyes. She almost never drove outside of the city without my father but today was different. After a long exhale she whispered a quick prayer and carried on.

We picked up an equally excited Emily and continued onto the New Jersey turnpike. We managed to make it there without any wrong turns and in less than two hours. When we arrived the parking lot was relatively empty since, after all, it was still raining. Although the park was still open, all of the rides were temporarily shut down. We bought some sodas and pretzels and waited. There was a certain calm that came with knowing nothing went wrong on the drive over and we were all there together with the roller coasters and sounds of raindrops in place of shrieks as a backdrop. About an hour after arriving the weather report proved true and the rain subsided to sunny skies. The rides reopened without their usual long lines, so we rode each and every one, some twice in a row. At one point we saw the Jonas brothers with their security guards also enjoying the park and rode on the same roller coaster as they did. When it came time for their performance we got to enjoy the show from the front row of the pit while my mother sat in the bleachers and looked on. The magic of that day for our young preteen minds was unfounded.

From an adult's perspective, it is clear that my mother had absolutely no interest in going to see three little boys from New Jersey perform cheesy four chord pop songs about crushes and first kisses. I can’t imagine any adult at the time that would but nonetheless she got in her car and drove both her own children and took on the responsibility of ensuring the safety of someone else's child because she knew it would make us happy. My mother is deathly afraid of roller coasters. Everything about that day from watching us ride roller coasters she herself would not enjoy to sitting through a concert of music she did not care for was a sacrifice. These types of sacrifices are ordinary for mothers. My mother drove all of her kids to school every day, showed her support through countless mind-numbing little league games, worked two jobs to come home, cook dinner for the entire family and then help with English homework that I could have done on my own but I wanted the company for and that's just barley skimming the surface. What made the Six Flag day sacrifice so memorable was it was out of the ordinary. So I write this as a thank-you to all the mothers and my own who have sacrificed the unthinkable and provided consistency in the seemingly ordinary day to day to ensure the well being of their children. It is commonplace to expect this of mothers with little to no reward so I suppose the only reward we can really give is our gratitude, so thank you. Thank you oh so much.