Mother's Day
I hear crying outside -- high-pitched, like a baby's. My body immediately tenses up. I realize it's a cat. Motherhood is hearing that sound and momentarily feeling an urgent need to pick up the baby, even when your babies haven't been babies for a very long time.
Dreams about my mother. We were in my old house. Over coffee, I think back to how she drove up to Vermont on the first days -- the days we moved, the days my children were born. "Always unpack the kitchen first" has always been one of her life instructions.
On the table, two handmade cards -- paint, collage, color and beautiful lettering. Inside, words from my daughter to me on one side and to her step-mom on the other. Words of gratitude, each little detail tethered to the real-life moments that can so easily blur together over time. The other card from her girlfriend, with hopes of having the chance to spend time together down the road.
My son texts me, something about losing his phone yesterday during a bike ride. "It was crazy!" I wonder for a moment if he will remember Mother’s Day. Over the years since his dad and I split up, we’ve let Mother’s Day and Father’s Day slide, a casualty of divorce. A card, a gift – the kids always remember, but we aren’t always together and that’s just the way it is.
It has been nearly ten years since I came out. Last night, lying in bed with Mani before we watched a show and turned out the light – our ritual – I talked about how badly I behaved that summer. I did not handle things well. For a long time, I’ve told myself I had no choice – “it was bigger than me” a way of justifying the fact that I was dishonest and so very fearful, chaotically furtive. I have tried to be compassionate with the me of that moment. The truth is, guilt still sits at my table some days – not guilt for coming out or even ultimately ending my first marriage, but guilt for causing pain to people I loved.
Mani reminded me that guilt is a protector. She wears muddy boots and doesn’t take them off at the door. “What if you blow your life up again, huh?” She asks this casually, like it could very well happen. “You’ll need me.”
I sighed. A tear leaked out the side of my left eye, rolling onto the pillow as my thoughts drifted to Philip Larkin’s poem, This Be the Verse, with its famous and timeless opening lines: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do.”
To be a mother or to have a mother – in other words, to be a human – is to fuck up and to learn self-forgiveness, over and over again. But even “fuck up” feels harsh; who among us hasn’t had moments in our lives when this thing we call “our best self” was missing in action, left the building altogether? When our blind spots eclipsed reason? When – in my case – repressed desire and authenticity came exploding forth like a geyser?
Three nights ago, Mani was boiling water in a small pot on the front left burner of the stove. When she tossed a few chunks of potato into the water – which had not fully reached a boil – the water flew up out of the pot. For one slow-motion moment, it looked like a mushroom cloud of water before landing all over the stovetop, floor, and Mani’s arm. I was sitting in my usual spot at the table. I leapt up and raced over to her. “Are you ok? Should I call 911?” She ran to the sink to put her left arm under cold water while I grabbed towels to mop up the floor.
Thankfully and somewhat miraculously, she was ok. We did call the doctor on call, but by the time we got a call back some 45 minutes later, she was truly fine. (By the way, this is an actual scientific phenomenon called superheating.)
I have apologized. At a certain point, if an apology is truly genuine, the transgressor needs to do the second part of that act and extend forgiveness to herself, too. Self-flagellation is not growth, nor will it lead to healing.
One of the gifts of time is being able to gain perspective. The gradual processes of trusting myself, developing stronger boundaries, and learning from the past – for me, this means a commitment to honesty, even and especially when it frightens me – have allowed me both to feel closer to my own mother and to know that the biggest gift I can offer my kids is to give them room to figure things out on their own.
It is the tallest order, and also the most profound gift.
On this Mother’s Day, I bow down to you. You who did your best. You who behaved badly and made amends. You who learned to mother yourself. You who stitched your own heart back together with twigs and bits of string. You who kept going, perhaps not perfectly because there is no such thing as perfect, but in the only ways you knew how. You who managed to get food on the table and small bodies clean even through your own exhaustion. You who gave up and chose your battles and made painstaking decisions and questioned yourself and prayed in the shower or on the train. You who understood the difference between devotion and martyrdom, and you who still stumble along that continuum. You who grieve, who lost your mother or your child too soon. And you who rise every morning, ready to scoop up that crying baby who has long since grown.
Just as I finish writing this, a text comes from my son. “I love you so much more than you will ever know.” That sums things up nicely.