Mothers

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Today I am grateful for mothers.  When I started rolling this around in my head I considered being grateful for just MY mother, but that wasn’t broad enough. 

While I am grateful for her, I am also grateful for mothers everywhere.  What joy our daughters, daughter-in-law and former daughter-in-law have brought to our lives by providing us with grandkids.  We love these mothers most especially because of this gift.

My thoughts are with so many of my friends whose mothers have died.  This day must be a difficult one for them, just like Father’s Day is for me, even after so many years.  I am very fortunate to still have my mother.  At 87 she is frankly “more” of what she always was.  She is an irascible force to deal with, opinionated, sassy, annoying, afraid, confident, insecure, mouthy, and fun.  She is her own person to the consternation of my sister and me, especially my sister who lives only a mile away from her in Madison, Wisconsin and I am grateful she mothers my mother when she needs it.

When you are your own person it means you smoke cigarettes made out of rope even though everyone wants you to stop.  Not for your health, because come on, you’re 87 and made it that far with a woogie hanging out of your lips. . .because of the expense and stench.  When people tell you your apartment smells like a pub in Ireland, on St. Paddy’s Day. . . in the 50’s. . .you screech at them, “Oh, it does NOT!  You’re exaggerating!”  When the doctor tells you that you have pneumonia you tell him you don’t!  Period!  “I can’t have pneumonia!  I didn’t even have a cold!”  When your eyesight fails, you stubbornly scream “I can’t SEE that!” even though what you are asked to look at has not yet been brought to the same room.  When you are your own person you purchase hearing aids but never wear “the damned things” because they don’t work anyway and they are a “pain-in-the-ass”!

Being your own person means you do what you want to do, no matter how old you are.  It means when you are shopping at Costco in Pennsylvania and see a bunch of huge stuffed dogs, you buy them for your great-grandkids, squealing like you are one of them all the way to the checkout, not caring one hoot if everyone thinks you’re nuts.  You don’t care.  You’ve earned the right, simply through time, to do what you want.  This force to be reckoned with is my mother.  Like Peter Pan, she won’t grow up!  I’m glad.

Since she has been alone for the last 20 odd years, she’s done things exactly as she’s wanted.  “I’m going to have lace curtains in my living room because you’re father never would have wanted them because they were too girly!”  When she moved to Wisconsin and her new bed was delivered, we covered it with a hot-pink, fully eyelashed, Betty Boop comforter.  My niece did a painting of Betty’s face for over the bed.  It looks like the bedroom of a twelve-year-old. . .and it is. . .my mom’s.  Her best and strongest characteristic is that she is now and will forever be a kid at heart.  I can only hope I inherited that trait, too, especially as a mom and grandmom.

Today, while I am grateful for mothers, it goes much deeper than that for me.  I am grateful for those women who try desperately to become mothers, yet it never quite happens.  Many may have had miscarriage after miscarriage in their efforts, or endured endless testing, ultimately giving up.  Mother’s Day for them, must present a kind of empty longing, a personal torture, which cannot be described.  I carry a hearprint for them.

I can’t leave out the gratitude I have for the incredible women who adopt, plunging them into motherhood without the necessary hormone surge.  Yet they would not be blessed with children if the birth mothers had not made the ultimate decision to offer their child a better life, so I’m grateful for those birth mothers, too. Bing!  Heartprint!

I’m also grateful for those brave women who believe in their soul of souls that motherhood is not for them and choose to not have children.  Good for them for not only knowing themselves deeply, but having the courage to stand with that knowledge against the pressure of a society geared towards being a mother at all cost. Another heartprint.

My gratitude is over the roof today.  I know that.  I’m not counting how many times I used the word because I don’t care.  I’ve earned the right.  Motherhood does that to a person.  No matter which variation you are.