The word 'mom' reminds me of some kind of glorious groundhog day.
Yesterday, I was out walking my god, breathing in the sweet smells that occur on a warm day after the rain, and I thought about how god damn happy I was, at that second, to be alive.
Even though my dog was pawing at his nose lead/leash, annoyed that he couldn't run free, pulling me every chance he could get... I felt peace.
Even though every yard I passed so was so much prettier than mine, which I tend to neglect, I felt peace.
Even though my husband hasn't walked the dog with me, and I miss him, in four months, I felt peace.
Even though every yard I passed so was so much prettier than mine, which I tend to neglect, I felt peace.
Even though my husband hasn't walked the dog with me, and I miss him, in four months, I felt peace.
Even though my family has been disjointed by the Hepatitis treatment my husband is on, and we are all filtering ourselves through a thick darkness, I felt peace.
I took a deep breath of this peace and my mother entered my mind... or my heart.
I thought of her and all her hard years. I remembered how poor we were, and I thought of how I would have felt as a mother watching my children warm themselves by the gas stove because we had no oil to heat our home.
I remembered, in quick succession, the three relationships she had- the men that were in her life and so in mine.
I remembered the hard work she did when she went back to school so that she could get off welfare and provide better. I remembered the years she spent in therapies and spiritual practices mending her own heart, and the mornings her and I spent, when I was a teenager, having coffee, talking endlessly about all of it until we would decide to head out and cruise the second-hand shops. She would share with me all the things she learned, I would listen, and we would talk. Some how, I think she intuitively knew that these lessons were infinitely more important than the hours I was missing in school.
I didn't know it then, but I was listening to her growing up and growing out. I know this now because I have two daughters... and I don't feel like 'a mom,' I still feel like my mother's daughter.
Back then... she was not the essence of perfection that I thought she was, she was not all grown up, she was her mother's daughter.
I remembered the whole of her as I walked my god, and I felt an overwhelming thank you to her for this joy that I felt. She is so much of who I am, even the bits of her that I didn't like functioned as markers to what I did like. She was and is the most graceful pillar I have ever known. She embodies such strength under the fragility of her skin.
And then, I remembered that today was mother's day (convenient I know), and that I had been too caught up being a mom, making sure my kids were able to pull off their mother's day surprises to attend to my own mother's.
And this groundhog day of events, this whirl wind of repeated history rich with character, this merry-go-round of love like no other love I have ever known... the love that I have, the overwhelming love that I have for my daughters, the heart stopping love, it is the same love my mother has for me; it caught my breath.
And that she, like me, is just her mother's daughter. That we are at once opposites and the same.
It takes my breath away to understand that somebody loves me the way I love my children.
It takes my breath away to understand that I have been given the opportunity to love and raise my children the way that my mother loved and raised me. Honestly.
Happy Mother's day Mom, you truly are a god sent angel. I know that you don't get that quite as much as you should, but one day... you will.
mantra: love true
