May 5, 2017
Whenever we get off the phone, we tell each other we love each other and my mother makes a point of saying, ‘Speak to you later.’ She says it every time, sometimes more than once. It’s a promise, and it’s a prayer. Someday, maybe soon (definitely sooner than I would like), it won’t be true. I know that, and so does she. But she says it to me, ‘speak to you later,’ and I say it back to her. Because it’s not someday yet.”Mother’s Day 2017
May 14, 2017
“Mothering is hard” is a ludicrous statement. Mothering is embodying Sisyphus, forever pushing the boulder up the mountain only to watch it roll back down. Because infanthood, because toddlerhood, because tweenhood and because teenagehood. Because sleeplessness, bodily fluids, illness, disability, social anguish, self-doubt, incompetence, fear of failure and fear of loss. Because you are caring for someone so deeply that you would literally catch their puke in your bare hands, and wiping their butts is no grosser to you than wiping your own, and you would willingly relive the hell that is middle school if it meant they wouldn’t have to, and this is an experience of selflessness that has no comparison. You don’t have to be female to mother. You don’t have to have experienced gestation or childbirth to mother. You don’t even need to be responsible for a child to mother. But you do need to be willing to break your heart wide open and offer the most vulnerable and strongest bits of it to another being…for as long as you and that other being shall live. There are no vacations or days off from mothering; even when you travel long distances, you’re still doing the work. There is no financial compensation for mothering, in fact quite the opposite. There are rewards, but they are often disguised and sometimes withheld and, anyway, being rewarded is NOT what mothering is about and it never was. So is it any wonder that so many of us who have this job feel like failures? Is it a surprise that some people are seriously bad at it? Once a year, we fetishize and idolize and maybe even patronize this concept of “Mother.” But in reality that concept is so varied, so complicated, so hard to grasp that it’s truly impossible to know, ever, whether one has really succeeded at mothering. Platitudes like “there’s nothing like a mother’s love” are meaningless in the face of the messy, sticky, painful, joyous, confounding, stunning reality that is mothering.
I hope this day that you remember that none of us–not a single one–is perfect. I hope this day that you feel gratitude for whatever mothering you’ve received, however flawed, and pride in whatever mothering you’ve done, however difficult. We are all just imperfect humans doing our very best to give, receive and express LOVE.
So if that last sentence describes you, my friend, then may I just say, Happy Mother’s Day. Keep on loving.
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