Maybe it was hormonal. Or perhaps maybe it was the Lifetime movie I watched the night before. Whatever the reason, I found myself shedding more than a few tears folding the laundry last week.

Motherhood has a funny way of working. It grinds and it pushes you to your very limit only to choose that exact moment of sheer exhaustion and desperation to show you just how wonderful this entire thing really is. To show you a glimmer of magic that motherhood holds even during the most mundane of tasks.

Laundry.

It had already been a long day. Too long. I pulled the freshly dried load from the dryer and loaded it into my basket. I picked it up, turned the light switch off with my elbow and closed the laundry room door behind me. On my way up the stairs I could hear my children giggling outside, completely immersed in whatever game they had created and I sighed deeply when I walked in my room knowing that I would have a few quiet moments to myself as long as a fight didn’t erupt or Dad didn’t forget that he was supposed to be watching the kids.

Wait, he knew he was supposed to be watching the kids outside, right? I walked over to my bedroom window to see him hosing down the back patio. Ok, good.

I walked back over to my bed, dumped out the laundry and commenced with folding.

Grabbing a pair of jeans out of the pile and I noticed the grass stain hadn’t come out like I had hoped. Usually this would be a mental note for yet another thing I needed to find time to get to, but in this moment? I recalled the family football game the other day that had us all in smiles. And I laughed to myself when I remembered the moment when all of the little ones jumped onto my oldest and tackled him to the ground and ended up in a massive tickle fight. I rubbed my thumb over the grass stain and smiled.

Next was the button down shirt my youngest wore to church last week. I noticed the button was missing and would need to be sewn back on. When we got home and were undressing out of our Sunday best, she proudly walked into our bedroom, turned her back to us and instructed us to say, “Save me”. We obliged and upon us exclaiming it, she quickly turned around and tried to rip open her shirt Superman-style the way she had seen her brothers do plenty of times in the past. She just happened to forget that her shirt needed to be unbuttoned first. We had all seen the button pop off and she picked it up from the floor and brought it to me with a “sorry, Mom”. I smiled as I folded it up and added it to the pile.

It was the pair of shorts that I folded and set aside because I knew my oldest daughter had outgrown them. She has been growing like a weed and now looks like a young lady instead of a little girl – long legs and all. It was the T-shirt with the hole in it when my Owen tried to climb the back wall to get his ball back that his sister accidentally threw over. I remember running out of the house yelling at him that he was going to fall and break his neck after spotting him from inside the house. He just looked at me with the most triumphant smile and said, “Mom! I made it to the top”…

That will need to be stitched.

It was the socks that were now an off-color of white from all the times they have been worn on feet that now fit into my shoes. It was the dress that my little Miss Blair wore to church a few weeks ago where she recited a scripture in front of the entire Primary class for the first time. It was the hoodies that they each pulled out of their closets to keep warm while camping in the backyard.

Before I knew it, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, surrounded by laundry and memories. Sweet moments that I share with these babes. Ones that they will never grasp how truly wonderful and magical they are – you just have to look a little deeper some days, past the exhaustion. A little love and laundry goes a long way.