It’s Monday again - time for Coffee and Conversation.
When I was six, my family was driving on a highway late at night. Streaks of headlights and taillights painted the dark. For the first time, I realized that each car held people living lives as important to them as mine was to me.
I wanted to know what those lives were, and to share my own…
Mother’s Day is over, and I can relax again.
It’s not that I want to forget the day exists, or criticize those to whom it’s a much-anticipated celebration of the trials and tribulations of motherhood.
It’s just that I have a different perspective, and the rampant glorification of motherhood as a state of being.
It’s not that simple a picture.
Some women would desperately love to have children, and aren’t able to.
Some women, like me, are the parents of children who died.
Some women choose not to become mothers, and they are no less women, no less valuable, because of it.
Some of us were raised in “good homes” where there is enough food, decent shelter, clean clothes, toys- and an element of abuse and volatility that made it impossible to feel safe or trust our mothers fully.
Mother’s Day is a pat celebration, and it makes certain assumptions that aren’t true for all mothers, or all children.
Being a mother does not confer or assure that a woman is what her child needs her to be. Every day, there are women who mistreat, neglect, or abandon their children. There are mothers who are still, due to the abuses they suffered, children themselves, without the resources they need to provide a safe, loving, nurturing environment where their needs are met – not just the physical, but the ones higher on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
What makes a good mother? Who decides?
I believe, in the end, it is the child.
I don’t want to be feted on the second Sunday of May – I’m not into productions or fuss. I don’t need fancy food, or fancy flowers, or fancy gifts.
Personally, I have something different in mind.
I want everyday to be a day that builds my connection with my children. I want every day to be one where I tried harder, in concrete ways, to be a mom who supports them as they reach for higher planes on that pyramid. I want them to be well equipped for a happy, healthy life…for themselves, the people around them, and maybe especially for their potential partners or children.
I want our relationship to come without a yearly does of guilt if they don’t show the proper adulation…
I want Mother’s Days that embrace the fact that, for me, as an estranged daughter, and as the mother of a child who died in infancy, this day is tinged with loss and sorrow. It can’t ever be magazine-perfect, and that seems too high or far, and too artificial, a goal to reach for.
This year?
Annalise brought me a bouquet of dandelions she picked from the lawn. She decorated them with items from the craft bins. There was a her flower and a me flower, with ribbon arms and skirts. She gave them to me three days before Mother’s Day…on Sunday, they were going to seed. Today, we admired them one last time, and she got rid of them in the yard, where they can become parents.
Jim made me French toast before he left for work. He’s a chef; we’ve had only one Mother’s Day with him home in the 12 years we’ve been parents. I wasn’t hungry yet, so it waited in the fridge till I was ready.
He and Jeremiah cooked up a surprise. Jim left his cell phone, money, and the menu for our favorite Chinese restaurant. Miah was going to call in an order and pay for it…only, Miah is currently in his nocturnal week, and he fell asleep in the early afternoon, and didn’t wake until 10pm – as Jim was getting home, and the restaurant in question was closing.
It was a sweet gesture, even if it didn’t go the way they planned.
It was loving, and the mistake adds charm. It’s Lovely Chaos in action ( like the fact that I forgot to charge the camera battery, so no pictures from the day).
So now, post Mother’s Day, I want to wish one and all a happy everyday!
What I love about being their mom, everyday!
