In the springtime of motherhood, she doesn’t look like a mom at all. In fact, she’s not. Small, red and wrinkled and snuggled inside a pink blanket, the baby girl is a mom in training. Every day is a classroom where she will learn about nurture or neglect. She will learn to associate motherhood with one or the other.

The little mom in training can’t speak, but she soon learns that more is communicated by touch than talk. Although she’s sound asleep, she can interpret the gentle pressure on her chest in the middle of the night. It means motherhood calls for losing sleep and checking often to make sure a newborn is breathing.

As a toddler and young child, the springtime for a mom in training teaches her important lessons about delights, disappointments, detours and discipline. If her mother has learned to wisely balance these experiences, the mom in training has a good foundation for Motherhood 101.

In the summer of her life, a mom in training experiences the blush of love along with its frustrations and fickleness. She now knows way more than her own mother, savoring her newfound independence. Everybody else knows more than her mom does. Her chief adviser is as likely to be the gal who does her pedicures. After all, someone who can paint tiny pink pinwheels on your toenails is an expert in life and love, right?

And then comes the first stirring of life within her own body. Her umbilical cord was severed long ago with her mother, but now this mom-to-be suddenly feels a new connection with the woman who gave her life. Pregnancy becomes a strange and wonderful time of discovery as mom and mom-to-be compare notes.

The first day new mom is alone with her baby, overwhelmed with its absolute helplessness, a mom in progress gets the first true inkling of what motherhood is all about — super vigilance. She is the source of everything for this life, not just for now, but for as long as she lives. As her children grow, this mom grows to realize just how smart her own mother has always been.

In the fall of her life, the mother of the empty nest stirs uncomfortably. She picks up a framed photograph of her child and wonders, “Did I do enough? Did I set a good example? Have I really prepared this child for success in life? Oh, if only I had ... ”

In time, the mom in the graduate level of motherhood finds new ways to put all those wonderful mothering skills into practice.

She nurtures. She encourages younger women. She lends her hands to projects in her church and her community. She’s now a mom on a mission, serving with a newfound confidence that comes from accepting herself, flaws and all. She focuses outward, offering her gifts freely and seeking no other reward than to know she’s made a difference.

In the winter of her life, the mom turned grandma and great-grandma looks indeed like a mother. Years of training and experience have carved worry lines into her brow and a gentle kindness into her eyes. Once again, touch is more important than talk.

She snuggles down under a warm afghan with a contented sigh. She has given her all for motherhood, her body, her hands and, most of all, her heart.

Happy Mother’s Day!

— E-mail: bdavis@register-herald.com