Mothering

I haven't had much to say around here lately. It's not lack of subject matter, plenty of life has happened around here. The garden is growing, the boys are growing, the dog still sleeps a lot.

  Mother's Day is coming up and that always fills me with a certain kind of dread.  I don't like Mother's Day. I don't want to believe the hype.  The breakfast in bed, cheesy jewelry, red roses and little blue boxes type of enforced recognition.  I don't want to want it, but I do.  At least a little bit.  It always feels like a disappointment.  I don't actually need a Hallmark morning to know that my family loves me.  It is perplexing to me that I care at all.

 Mother's Day is complicated for motherless mothers.  There is no way to celebrate your own motherhood without acknowledging the loss of your  mother.  No amount if gluey kisses, burnt pancakes or fancy presents can fill in the open spot.  It's just there.  Most of the year I just live with it, the size ebbs and flows but on Mother's Day, and on my birthday it gapes wide.

My discomfort with Mother's Day is not new. As a kid I always liked the school house craft intended as a "surprise" for Mother. I did my best to make the perfect gift.  Even then it seemed kind of odd to me that my hand towel, painted vase or whatever was supposed to represent a years worth of mothering.  How could that ever be adequate?  Sometime in my twenties  I decided that I had had enough and did not send my Mom a card for Mother's Day.  I felt like she knew I loved her, and appreciated all that she had done for me.  It was a grave error in judgement on my part.  She was furious and hurt.  I didn't understand at all.  It wasn't until Doodle refused to partake in the pre-school  Mother's Day gifts that I really got it.  Of course it didn't actually reflect his love for me, but it mattered and it hurt.  I was very confused  by my reaction.  When another preschool parent made the offhand remark that maybe some other mother's child would make me a gift I was nearly in tears.

Every year I think, it's ok.  Whatever happens will be fine.  Sigh.  Maybe this year is my year.  The stars will align and I won't feel like an orphan or a terrible mother.  One of my friends from Doodle's school, an amazingly calm mother of four under six, also has a complicated relationship with her still living mother.  She thinks of Mother's Day as a time to acknowledge her mothering peers.  To celebrate the real time mothers that make an impact on her life everyday.  I like it. I think it is the piece that is really missing from standard Mother's Day fare.  We are all out here together. Some days in the trenches and some days on the mountaintop.  

So, Thank you, thank you to all the Mom's ( and Dad's and teachers and friends, Uncles and Aunties and all the fine humans) who routinely stand in the gap for any Mom.  Mothering is really a communal experience, none of us can make it alone.