My Mother’s Day sleep-in ran even later than I had predicted.

At 6:12 am I felt a sharp ping, three flicks to my cheek in rapid succession followed by a whisper from my six year old, “Happy Mother’s Day. I’m going to braid your hair now.”

I was able to see through one eye lid as it slowly peeked through the fog of morning to see the outline of a small person hovering over me yielding what could have been a Kaiser blade, some people call it a sling-blade.

It turned out to be a comb. I was having my hair combed before 6:15am by a child who had never expressed an interest in learning to braid and must have found the black comb in a memory box from my Grandpa as I had no idea they even made them that sharp anymore.

Next up was Ellie. Sweet Ellie was ready to give me my Mother’s Day massage. Awesome.

I laid on the family room bench, head and neck drooping off the end as per her instructions and proceeded to endure a series of aggressive, sharp punches followed by some sort of ceremonial scraping and then oh good, Chloe is back on the scene. She’s retired the hairbrush and is now just thrusting her fists into my armpits in an attempt to tickle me into submission, something she no doubt learned while reading her book, “How To Celebrate Mother’s Day From a North Korean Prison.”

The near teenager sleep walks down the hall towards us. She senses something is different. Hair braiding? Punching Mom on the bench? She ducks into the craft cupboard, grabs a piece of GOOSE paper (good on one side), a pen and retreats back down the hall to create a Mother’s Day card made from 80% pure love, 20% recycled notes from an employee handbook on how to represent the company when dealing with off-site customers.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the brave ones out there.