"You wrote one for your father, but no one has written anything about me". There it was, guilt. The guilt that only a mother can bring. So this morning I was laying in bed with just one eye open when a red cardinal landed on the branch outside my window. I could only see the upper part of his body, but he was so red and brilliant I wished I could see more, and then as if he heard my thoughts he hopped to the branch above and I could see all of him. Cardinals are a sign for me. I knew this was the day, that I would write about my mom. I've been wanting to do it, and feeling guilty because I haven't. Swirling conflicted feelings and thoughts run in my brain, when I consider her. I am 50 years old, have four kids of my own, two still at home. Today, right now, I understand why it's hard to write about my mom. It's so hard to separate myself from her, but then the word came. The word that would describe my mother and all mothers. Essential.
Mothers are like the breath. There is no life, without her. She is the life. My mother makes everything run. She's the heart of our family. She's the one who keeps track of things. She the one who calls and checks in. She's the one who quietly picks up the dishes, refills the nut dish, waters the flowers, and dusts the mantel. No one knows all the things she does to keep the family machine running. No one but her. I have spent a life time trying to catch up to her. Trying to find a way to be as calm. As generous. As loving.
The problem though, is that I didn't know, it's hard to see me running after her, because of the pain. No my mom wasn't perfect. She did all the things that mothers do, just as I have done myself to make things complicated. But today, this moment, I know that the complicated feelings come from the word essential. She is essential like flour is to a cookie recipe. My dad, might be the raisin, but my mother is the flour. My dad, is the storm, my mother is the gentle rainy day in April that we don't think too much about. My awareness of this hurts. Exquisitely. Yes, more guilt. And understanding as I see it in my own kids. I am the gentle April rain too. My mother is essential, and because we cannot imagine life without her, we prefer not to. It's not personal that we don't recognize all she does, it's her essentialness. It's the power of that word that creates the complication and the conflict. My sister in law lost her mother a year ago, and I feel guilt as I realize my inability to go there. Too painful.
My mother's calmness. One morning on my way to grade school my mother and I were having a rough morning. Sometimes we did. It wasn't fighting but she was having trouble getting me and my brother out the door. I remember that at some point I threw the front door open having forgotten something. As I did, the force of the door took my mothers big toe front nail right off her toe. She didn't yell, she barely flinched. She just got me out the door. When I got home she told me what had happened and was limping around. I had no idea that I had done it, none. She didn't let it show, she just wanted me to get to school on time.
As generous. There was a man who lived next door to my parents' summer cabin. My folks spent every weekend that was warm enough out at the lake. This man was a divorcee from a 50 something year marriage. He became part of our lives. For many years my mother prepared every meal with Sam in mind. Every night at dinner time out at the cabin, my mother would yell, "someone go get Sam and tell him dinner is ready!" It didn't matter what Sam said or did at dinner. It didn't matter what his opinions about life were, or his political leanings, she would feed this man. She considered his likes and dislikes as she planned her meals. She took him in. I know that my mother was not capable, of NOT doing this. She needed to do this. She didn't care if people knew. She didn't care what we thought of this. It was like breathing. She made it look easy. She made it look normal. In fact, that is exactly how his body was discovered one afternoon by my brother. It was time for dinner, and he wasn't answering his phone. She fed him until the day he died.
As loving. There were stumbles in my life, complications of pain that were untouchable. I always wished she could heal those painful places. But she could not. I think deep down, some of my conflicted feelings about my mother, were because I wished she could. I wished she could fix those traumas that she did not cause. But she couldn't. Today, I am grateful that she let me do it on my own. That she didn't get overly involved or take them on. She had faith in me. I felt her faith in her inability to take on my pain. I felt her believing in me, to handle it, to grow from it, to heal from it. And I have.
Friendships were always difficult for me. My mother didn't intrude on my life, but she taught me how to be a friend. One of my earliest memories of this was being desperate for friendship and bringing a large group of kids out to the cabin. I was nervous, but it kind of happened accidentally. I couldn't set the boundary without fear that it would upset someone, anyone, so I just brought everyone who wanted to come out, in several car loads.
Of course, it was dinner time. The cabin was in the middle of nowhere, a good 45 minute drive back to town. My mom was fixing dinner as we descended. She didn't know we were coming. We could smell dinner being cooked as we walked through the door. My mother is an outstanding cook, so the little cabin smelled divine. But as we hit the door and that smell, I realized what I had done by bringing all these kids at dinner time. I was worried that she would be mad. We raced through the cabin and down to the lake to swim. I thought maybe the swimming would take our minds off food and we could just gently leave. But no, as we walked up the beach, mom greeted my friends and invited all of them to stay for dinner. I never knew how she did it, but somehow, my mother managed to take a meal for 6 and turn it into a meal for 20. Some days, I feel that I will never catch up to her larger than life, Jesus like qualities.
We have a family joke about my mom. Every meal (and she cooked every single night and still does) when we would have gravy, my mother would say "there's more gravy in the kitchen". Today we will say this in chorus at a family meal, if it fits the dinner menu. But that sentence has stuck in our family like a theme for motherhood. My mother is the essence of more. There is more gravy, more food in the kitchen, more faith, more love. More breath. Always. She is like the breath of our family. She is easy to take for granted, but she is life.
Today I understand, the complication of that word: essential. As I face my own mother's day and wonder about my kids and how they feel, there is always questioning and conflict within me. Do they feel obligated or resentful. Hurt because I couldn't be every thing my mother was? Do they expect more of me than I can give? Will they remember me? Such inner turmoil. Then the knowing comes. No, they won't, not for many years to come. It's so hard to separate myself from her. Breathing doesn't need recognition. Breathing comes.