Mother's Day

Mother's Day

I've always said that days that are calendar-ized are
man made. Meaning given not by life, but by someone else.
Yet, they come around as the sun rotates and I feel air as my butt finds metaphorical earth
after my legs are kicked out from under me.

I feel silly being public about missing my mother.
You get it.  I say it enough.
She's been gone for 37 years.
Get over it.  How much can it actually pain me at this point?

Sometimes I want to ask myself those very things.

and much of the time, it doesn't hurt.  but then a day comes
and the calendar says that we are all to sit and think about
our mothers.

And I can.  I do.  I am.

She was so beautiful.
Everybody loved her. That's what everyone says.
She was likable.
She was talented. She was loved.
I didn't have her very long.  My sister had her for even less time.
And I don't have a lot of memories.

I remember her making dinner when American Pie was on the radio
as Carrie and I sat at the round table with the bright yellow vinyl table cloth
waiting. The walls were wallpapered with yellow zig zag fabric.

I remember her hair. It was so pretty and simple.  Her face so warm and pretty.
She didn't have to try hard at all to look that way.

I remember her making bread dough ornaments with us in the kitchen for Christmas.
We sat at the Shakey's table in the breakfast nook.

I remember eating spaghetti at that same table. The whole family.  Candles were lit
for ambiance. Could that be why I'm so nuts about soft lighting?

I remember snippets of more.  The memories are like snapshots that I might find in one of the almost too faded and worn by years gone by to really be able to look at anymore photo albums.

She was a good mom.
Maybe I don't have enough data to know that for sure, but for 10 years, she was a really good, warm, loving, all-in mom.  It broke her heart that she knew she would die when we were young. It still breaks mine.

There is more to Mother's Day.

I have a step mother, Maxine,  that has been a lovely and stable presence in my life since I was 12.  I have aunts that I love like mothers. I have Anna, who is as much like a daughter to me as I will ever have. I never met my mother-in-law; she died when Eric was 21. I have a step-mother-in-law who is sweet and lovely.  My sister is an amazing, real mother to Hudson and MyLinh. So many of my best friends are mothers to their heart-filled kids. One of my friend's mother is fading to the unrelenting sorrow of Alzheimer's.
The world is filled with amazing, painful, gone, sick, loving, courageous, tender, nurturing, real, complicated mothers. Just the thought of all of the mother stuff takes my breath away.  In a good, and in a not good way.  All rolled into one deep breath suck.

I have a hard time just saying, "Happy Mother's Day" as a blanket statement.
There is so much wound up in the word mother.
My wish for all of us is that we hold those relationships, those memories, and those feelings close, and give ourselves a break if it's not easy.

I miss you, mom.