This unique past weekend combined Mother’s Day with a huge, family-filled celebration of my mother’s 90th birthday. Both recognitions prompted her four daughters to reflect on some of the core lessons she taught us by example about being a mom. A few favorites from that list …

A mother is not so much someone to lean on as someone who eventually makes leaning unnecessary. It’s natural for us to want our children to need us forever. But the wiser part of us realizes that until our children don’t need us to survive, they’re at risk because we won’t always be here for them. Part of loving them means helping them learn how to get along without us. It’s an essential, heart-breaking labor of love.

In that same spirit, we raise our children knowing they will leave us. We instinctively know they can’t stay forever. In fact, if they do, we’ve failed them. We raise them up so that one day we walk them to the edge of the nest, show them the wide, wonderful world out there and then, depending on how long they crouch there staring outward, give them a gentle nudge (or a swift boot) to help them on their way.

And then what do we do? We moms are the only creatures on God’s green earth who invite their children back to visit. We even make dinner to entice them. Most other creatures will fight their offspring if they try to return; a few will eat them. But we humans, we lure them back because want to see our kids. Well, truthfully, we want to see their kids.

We are never the enemy. And we should never act like we are. Even when our child acts like the enemy, we will always be the older person in the room, the one with more wisdom, experience and insight than our child. So if someone is supposed to lead out, take the higher road, be the better example — it’s us. Even when we don’t want to.

We eventually realize (often almost too late) that we can’t blink during our motherhood years. We lose too much if we do. We hold a new infant in our arms, we blink and she’s toddling away. We blink again and she’s off to grade school. We blink a few more times and she’s running through junior high and high school. We blink and she’s dating, she’s off to college, she’s engaged. We shake our head, longing for a rewind, while we blink back the tears as she walks away into her new life.

Possibly the most difficult part of motherhood is letting our children experience the consequences of their choices. We fiercely guard them through their toddling years, holding out a hand to shield a head bump to a wall or a face plant to the floor. But as they grow up, as they stabilize, walk and then run, they start to steer their own lives. And then we must withdraw that protective hand so they can experience what happens when they intentionally choose to drive their noggin into a wall or their life into a bad corner. We know the basic principle of “pain causes change.” Fighting off the desire to shield our children from their bad decisions teaches them not to make bad decisions. So instead we teach them to pay attention to the pain.

Finally, nothing else we do with our lives will match the heartache and happiness, the pain and peace, and the frustration and fulfillment of raising our children.

Looking at our mom in her 90th year, we marvel she’s still here with us. This quiet, bemused, slight figure in a wheelchair is the stable glue that holds our families together.

We don’t know how much longer she will be with us. But for now, we’re collectively grateful that the mother still in our lives taught us how to be the mothers in our children’s lives.

What more could we want from her?

D. Louise Brown lives in Layton. She writes a biweekly column for the Standard-Examiner.

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