This is my mom and I, sometime in 1976. My resting face has not changed all these years.
I love my mom. I love being a mom. Every Mother’s Day I think about people who didn’t have wonderful mothers or had a particularly difficult childhood, or struggle with becoming a mom or are striving to be a good mom. Or mourn or grieve in any way because of Mother’s Day. And it’s weird because I don’t know how to think of these people without them thinking that I think I’m superior to them. Or that they want pity. Or that I’m gloating. I don’t want to be condescending. I hate comparing, and I hate being compared to.
But I do think it’s important to acknowledge people’s individual weariness. Because I want them to know they’re not alone. Maybe that’s also being condescending. I hope to get this right someday. I’ve found value in listening. That’s probably the best I can do.
I am grateful, though. And I want to acknowledge the amazing women in my life and how they’ve empowered me. My mom is wonderful. Generous, kind. Good teacher. I’m grateful to have known and grown to love my mother-in-law. She showed gentleness, strength, and grace through her last moments on this earth.
I’m grateful for friends who’ve shared wisdom and courage in and beyond their own circumstances.
I’m grateful for my daughter’s continuous patience and endless forgiveness.
I don’t ever want to take any of you for granted.
Disclaimer: I’m grieving and have more feelings than I know what to do with. Writing is one way to sort through them. Not sure if they’ll make sense, but here they are.
Sometime during Carla’s final two or three weeks. Probably Mother’s Day. Maybe the Sunday before. In Reilly’s parents’ house.
We’ve had dinner.
We’re sitting in the living room, just hanging out. All the kids are there.
One of them asks, “Do you want to go downstairs and watch a movie or something?”
Carla says, “I like sitting up here, talking to all of you.”
We stay upstairs.
We talk.
She loves it.
We love that she loves it.
Because we love her.
Disclaimer: I’m grieving and have more feelings than I know what to do with. Writing is one way to sort through them. Not sure if they’ll make sense, but here they are.
On June 10 after work I went with Reilly and Z to a friend’s dance performance at the Provo Library. This was two days after Carla’s funeral. I admit that emotions were still a little bit raw and just under the surface. We made our way to the ballroom on the 3rd floor. Shortly after we arrived my friend walked up behind me, said, “Hey, sexy!” and gave me a hug. As we embraced she asked how I was doing. I told her I was doing ok. She said, “Just ok?” By this time I was choked up, and tears were streaming down my face. We released the hug. I looked at her and said that Reilly’s mom died. She looked at Reilly, and he nodded. The performance was about to begin, so she went to get ready.
We found some seats and settled in to watch the work: a series of dances choreographed by a master’s candidate as her thesis. My friend performed the second dance, and then Reilly and Z left to browse the library, as Z was getting a little bit restless and loud. I kept watching the dance floor/stage. A few minutes later my friend made her way over and asked if she could sit by me. We talked for a few minutes until she had to turn on the music for one of the following dances.
In those few minutes, my friend listened. She held my hand. She cried with me. She said something that’s often said as trite, but she did it with such tenderness and compassion that it opened my heart up to being comforted and not just vulnerable. She said fortunately most of the world has experienced what we’ve experienced. If we pick a random stranger on the street, it’s likely that they’ve lost a loved one–a parent, a child, a spouse.
It helped being reminded that people would be able to relate. To understand. To empathize.
I told my friend that I didn’t mean to come to her performance to dump my emotions on her. I just wanted to be able to partake of something beautiful that wasn’t associated with sadness. Still, she listened. She danced beautifully. AND she called me sexy. I am forever grateful.
Disclaimer: I’m grieving and have more feelings than I know what to do with. Writing is one way to sort through them. Not sure if they’ll make sense, but here they are.
We all went out to dinner to celebrate Mother’s Day at Ruby River Steakhouse in Provo. We were supposed to have gone to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse up in Park City on May 12 for the official Mother’s Day, but snow was (not) strangely in the forecast. Geez, Utah.
The whole lot of us. Eleven of us. We talked and ate. I sat at the opposite end of the table from Nana Carla. I looked over at her every once in a while, and I would see her sometimes lost in thought. Or nibbling at her food. Or talking to another family member. Or taking photos with her phone. More often than not I saw her smiling.
A deep, underlying sadness lay just below the surface of … me? My soul? The dinner? Did everyone know or sense this would be our last Mother’s Day celebration with Nana Carla’s actual, physical presence? I know we smiled for her, too.
On the morning of Monday, May 20, Carla sent five photos from the last night’s dinner to my phone. (Three not pictured here.) I replied.
Ours, too, Nana.
We miss you so much.
What is Mother’s Day to these groups? I may have missed some categories, but in general this is what I have observed:
Looking at this list, I know what it’s like to:
This is my life experience so far, and I admit my empathy is limited to women who fit into these categories. Some fit neatly, for some the lines are blurred. I do my best to understand that, too.
I know women who:
Every Mother’s Day I think about these women. What are their struggles? How do they cope? Is this holiday something they even care about, or is it just another day? It seems the world praises mothers as women who have children, but I’ve always felt strongly that to be a mother you do not have to have children. I’ve always cringed at that part of that (cultural/societal) definition of motherhood; I’ve always felt to side with those who may fall in the shadows of the child bearers.
Not that child bearers shouldn’t be standing tall, because they totally should. Raising children is never easy, and devoted moms everywhere should be extremely proud of their hard work. My mom is wonderful. She sacrificed and taught and nurtured and scolded and guided me to learn really important lessons about life. I will always be grateful for everything she’s done and is doing for me.
I know many wonderful women who qualify as “super moms,” because they’re doing it all. They overcome all obstacles; they push aside excuses. They bend the universe around their will. These women have determination and passion, and I know they have their own trials and internal conflicts, but to me they are unstoppable. I admire them, because I know they also have to be super tired all the time.
But you guys. YOU. GUYS. I probably know even more women who deeply suffer when Mother’s Day comes around. It seems they feel a lot of traditional moms look down on them. They feel inferior, less than; their divinities/self-worths don’t measure up because of their different life experiences. Feeling this way, year after year — or even every day for some — is really hard.
If we don’t dedicate this day only to women with children, are we dismissing them? Is this their one day to feel better than the women without children? To say, “I’m so much more like Christ now because I have children”? Is motherhood the only thing that matters to our (eternal) happiness?
Wouldn’t the womanly and motherly thing to do is to include and love women for their differences and experiences, no matter what they are?
Every ten years or so a good thought graces my soul, and four years ago on Mother’s Day I posted this on Facebook, and it still holds up:
As women are all descended from Eve, we all should remember our nobility as Mothers of All Living. Our stewardship, however we currently define it in our lives, is divine.
Happy Mother’s Day.
To my glorious mom, happy Mother’s Day. To all mamas everywhere, happy Mother’s Day. But especially to my dear women friends who face pain, loss, and sadness, and live with heartbreak: at the very least, you have nurtured and guided me and helped me heal in profound ways. If that isn’t being a mother, I don’t know what is. Happy Mother’s Day to you.
Give me my pain, my blood-curdling scream, and give me a tight grip of my hand and some assuring words, and give me my excruciating pain, rending from the core of my being. Give me my purging, my crowning, the seemingly impossible; give me forced breathing, seething through my teeth, grunts and snorts and spasms; seizing my body, sweating cold, feverishly.
I want what happened to you, what keeps happening to you. Us. Our relationship will go on. I want that needing from need; hope from helplessness and utter dependence. I want to look into new and innocent eyes, listen to new life sleeping and crying and laughing; tend to every need. I want to feed, comfort, cheer. I want to extend the bond and strengthen it and tell stories just like you did. I want to love. Just like you do.
Give me no other mother but you, with your resilient spirit and quiet resolve and beautiful soul. You love, and I love you. I’d like to take back the pain I’ve caused you, but you’ve already used it to turn me into the person I am today. Unique, dorky. You’ve given me life, you heighten the humanity within me. Give me no other mother. Give me only your hugs, your smiles, our memories. One day I will give, too. Just like you do.
Tori Amos, “Ribbons Undone.” This song is absolutely beautiful. It may seem to focus on the little girl, carefree, playing, picking flowers. But the point of view is the mother’s. She’s watching her daughter, loving her as much as anyone could love. Seeing such potential, realizing her daughter starting to understand what growing up is like. This song is about a mother’s love. That stands on its own, speaks for itself.
Vodpod videos no longer available. She’s a girl
Rising from a shell
Running to spring
It is her time it is her time
Watch her run with ribbons undone
She’s a rose in a lily’s cloak
She can hide her charms
It is her right there will be time
To chase the sun with ribbons undone
She runs like a fire does
Just picking up daises
Comes in for a landing
A pure flash of lightning
Past alice blue blossoms
You follow her laughter
And then she’ll surprise you
Arms filled with lavender
Yes my little pony is growing up fast
She corrects me and says
“You mean a thoroughbred”
A look in her eyes says the battle’s beginning
From school she comes home and cries
I don’t want to grow up Mom, at least not tonight
You’re a girl
Rising from a shell
Running through spring
With summer’s hand in reach now
It is your time
It is your time
So just run with ribbons undone
It is your time yes my angel
It is your time
So just run with ribbons undone
Run run darlin’
Ribbons undone
A Little Thinking 