On Mother's Day

"There is nothing so difficult to arrive at as the nature and personality of one's parents. Death, about which so much mystery is made, is perhaps no mystery at all. But the history of one's parents has to be pieced together from fragments, their motives and character guessed at, and the truth about them deeply buried, like a boulder that projects one small surface above the level of smooth lawn, and when you come to dig around it, proves to be too large ever to move, though each year's frost forces it up a little higher."

We all want to understand our parents, no matter what kind of parents they were, whether we admired them or despised them. (I think this quote gets at that craving beautifully, and is from the novel, "Time Will Darken It," by William Maxwell.) We must learn about our parents to understand ourselves, especially our differences. So we dig, and we dig. I have a new analysis of my mother and my father, and my stepmother, too, every year that passes and certainly as I have more experiences and grow older. I then see new angles, perceive new reasons, have new appreciations. 

Mother's Day was always a haunting day for me. My experience of her wasn't captured in any of the Hallmark cards down at Wallgreens. There was no card that I could send to my mother, and I don't think I ever sent her one. This weekend, however, I'm thankful to tears to the universe that my mother and father created me;  because without this life, I wouldn't get the chance to know the enormous love of a child, my son.  It's a love that can't truly be measured, weighed, or described without sounding gooshy, but I suspect that it's why Earth remains in orbit. (I don't exactly plan to share that theory with NASA.) 

Mother's Day is complex. Bittersweet.  That's just the way it is. Whatever you do, however you celebrate your mother, directly or indirectly, try to celebrate yourself, your life, your dreams, and your goodness. Your life is in your hands now; you're raising yourself.  

My great discovery is this:  we can give what we didn't receive--to ourself, our partner, our children--it's within us.  And that giving will transform you if you let it. 

Comments

[amyeden]

Linda, wonderful that you can pick out a card today, that there's one that fits, that's a good sign! And great that you can parse the good from the painful and remember those dresses and also that you recognize the influence of your mother's era and the very few choices that women then seemed to have...

[amyeden]

Keely, so true - that most of the time when we're talking about our childhood issues we're relating to a parent who isn't that same parent anymore.
That definitely confused me when I started therapy and had the urge to react to my father and mother (both addicts) as they were rather than as they are. (Though, unfortunately my mother didn't learn how to grow up, as yours has - that's so great that she has.) To me the healing/therapy process so often feels like traveling back in time and tweaking the emotional machine so that it runs right in present...

[Linda]

This Mother's Day, I am thankful. I have a lightness of being that is a new feeling for me.

There was a time when I had trouble picking out a card for Mom. None of them described the relationship we had. Alcohol had taken it's toll on our family and left resentment and anger in its wake.

I know now that she did her best. It was a different time when wives stayed with their husbands and did all they could to keep the days as outwardly normal as possible. The average person didn't understand completely the long term effect alcoholism had on members of a family.

Today, I simply love her. I am grateful that she took care of us. That we had a family. I remember Easter dresses she sewed for each of us girls. Incredible Thanksgiving dinners. I remember hearing her scrubbing floors as I lay in bed asleep. (This would have been after working all day, making a full meal for dinner, taking care of her girls as they did their homework and got ready for bed.)

She worked so very hard. Today, instead of anger and resentment, I just feel grateful and full of love for this woman and am so very glad she has been and is a part of my life.

For me, it is a good feeling. I am glad I have been able to come to this point while Mama is still with us.

I had no trouble picking out a card for her this year. A wonderful thing.

[Keely H.]

What a beautiful sentiment. I'm just beginning the process of working through my childhood with my alcoholic single mother and I'm just now starting to realize how much she's grown up since I was a child. I feel so foolish for thinking I was the only one changing and evolving. It's strange revisiting repressed memories and unresolved pain and realizing that the person who caused it doesn't exist anymore. I call her on mother's day every year and maybe this year I'll remember to tell her how happy I am that she has a life she can feel content in and how proud I am of the remarkable changes she's made since she decided to give up the whole self-loathing, self-destructive alcoholic lifestyle.