I wonder when Mother's Day will begin to feel like my day instead of my own mother's day.
I've been a mom almost 15 years now. Fifteen times around the sun. Fifteen times this Sunday in May has come up on the calendar. And 15 times I haven't felt like it's for me, but for her.
She's not here. I bought no Mother's Day cards this year. No minutes turning into hours reading and re-reading and rejecting and re-visting all the super-sentimental poetry and fake memories someone who doesn't know either of us crafted in a cubicle somewhere and passed on to a designer who laid the words out in a swirly script and sent it on for embossing and production. Mass production of heartfelt emotion.
I didn't even visit a store with a card rack this year.
I guess 15 years of parenthood just doesn't ever replace the previous however many decades of being in relationship with a parent, especially a mother. She's the first thing I ever knew.
It's still her day. It's not mine.
And I miss her.
I've been a mom almost 15 years now. Fifteen times around the sun. Fifteen times this Sunday in May has come up on the calendar. And 15 times I haven't felt like it's for me, but for her.
She's not here. I bought no Mother's Day cards this year. No minutes turning into hours reading and re-reading and rejecting and re-visting all the super-sentimental poetry and fake memories someone who doesn't know either of us crafted in a cubicle somewhere and passed on to a designer who laid the words out in a swirly script and sent it on for embossing and production. Mass production of heartfelt emotion.
I didn't even visit a store with a card rack this year.
I guess 15 years of parenthood just doesn't ever replace the previous however many decades of being in relationship with a parent, especially a mother. She's the first thing I ever knew.
It's still her day. It's not mine.
And I miss her.
2 comments:
One day you will meet again, if both your names be in the Book of Life.
Hi, Carolynn. It's good to hear from you again.
You are right, and I believe it to be true.
It's a strange place, surreal--motherlessness.
You know, of course, that I've lost babies, and with the first loss, I was that something that has no word--the "mother" without a child. But this other side, the adult "child" without a mother has its own whole grief experience that sometimes hits hard and ferocious. There's something about identity tied up in it.
Do we need to have this day, anyway? Do we really?
I am being selfish. For me, somehow, it's just more of an open wound at present.
Thank you for coming alongside.
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