Even though it is kind of obvious and cheesy to write a column about Mother’s Day on Mother’s Day, for lack of a better idea, I decided to go with it.

But that doesn’t leave me with much material for the column. After all, I am not a mother. And after a dream I had last week, I don’t think I should ever have kids.

I dreamt that I had a daughter, about year and a half she was, I guess (she could walk, anyway, but not talk well). She was robust, sort of thick, like my nephew Jake, and had curly brown hair a shade or two darker than mine.

Where my husband was, I don’t know, but in the dream we were living in the house I grew up in and I was frantic, running late for work. In my rush to get out the door, I forgot my daughter.

I just left a one-and-a-half-year-old at home by herself.

But it gets worse.

I worked something like an 11-hour day n and I never do that (yeah right) n so when I came home I was exhausted and basically went straight to bed. So not only did I leave my daughter at home alone, I pretty much forgot about her for a whole day and night.

It didn’t hit me until I was driving to work the next morning, and I panicked. I sped to her daycare to see if my husband had dropped her off, by chance.

No luck.

I drove home to find a car pulling over in front of the house. It was some people who lived nearby. They saw my daughter, who had wandered out of the woods across the street. They yelled, “Hey, there’s a kid over here!”

I ran to her, she was dirty and whimpering and mumbling something that seemed to indicate she didn’t want me to leave her again.

The scariest part is, I didn’t feel that bad. I felt guiltier about the fact that I felt little to no guilt about forgetting her.

What the heck does that mean?

When I woke up, I was still disturbed by the dream. I even called my husband, who is in the Coast Guard and was on duty, to tell him that we could never have kids.

Knowing that I’m a bit of a hypochondriac, he rolled his eyes (no, I couldn’t see him, but that’s what he would do). He figured I had read another article in the millions of magazines I read that detailed the horrors of childbirth or something.

When I told him about the dream, he laughed and thought I was even crazier.

I know if I told my mom about it, she would just laugh, too. She knows the whole concept of pregnancy and childbirth kind of freaks me out (if you read my column last week, you probably figured that already).

My mom, however, had five children. I assume if she went through it that many times, it must not have freaked her out. And she never left us home alone when we were barely 2 years old.

While we were growing up, she had that perfect balance of love and discipline that made us want to go to her if we were hurt or upset; but we feared her enough to never (OK, rarely) disobey.

OK, so this is not the great Ode to My Mother, but I’d say that anyone who can bear and rear five good kids (an engineer, a landscaper, a journalist, a lawyer-in-training and an 18-year-old … we don’t know what she’s going to do yet) deserves a pat on the back.

So, Happy Mother’s Day, mom!

ashley.taylor@suffolknewsherald.com