Hero Mommy

Nikki and daughter

Recently, my six year-old daughter came home from school with an assignment: “What is a Hero?”

Her task was to take what she had been taught about a hero and identify every day heroes based on what she’d learned. We sat for an hour arranging various photos of police officers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, etc. into a collage.

When we’d come to the end she looked up at me with a disappointed look on her face and said, “Mom, we didn’t make room for your picture?”

Surprised, I looked at her and asked her what she meant. And very sweetly she replied, “Well, in class we learned that heroes are people that help others and make the world a better place to live in.” I’m not sure why this association came as a shock to me, but, nevertheless, it did.

All that came to mind was, how could I, a woman who prepares dinner approximately one night a week, burns coffee, and occasionally forgets to read a bedtime story be considered a hero?

So, reluctantly, I asked her what makes mommy a hero. I listened while she explained, “Moms always have band aids for ‘boo-boos,’ make soup and sing when you are sick, fight off the boogie monsters that aren’t afraid of the night light and do special things with their kids like bake cookies after pedicures on Saturday afternoons.”(The last one has become somewhat of a tradition in our household.)

As she went on with a rather long list, I realized that it’s not about how often we as mothers mess up; it’s about how we keep moving forward in spite of our imperfections.

Nikki Hall-Branch
Public Relations Coordinator
Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Fort Worth