Three Mother’s Day celebrations at three schools today, which means a lot of things I can’t stand - small talk, forced displays of affection, and sugary processed foods. But Mother’s Day with kids this age is not about us, it’s about them. One girl in Bobby’s class stood alone with red eyes and a tear stained face. Oh, the abandonment. Also, the guilt of that mother who no doubt had to travel, work, or was sick or even dead while this was going on. The guilt.
I’m profoundly grateful I rarely have to miss these events for these kids. They may say what they like about me later, but I was there.
Every year it gets easier to handle the influx of Mother’s Day promotions in my inbox and sentimental Facebook posts waxing poetic about one’s mothers. This is probably the first year I can sincerely be happy for others that they and their mothers have good relationships. No, really. I have a lot. I don’t have that, but hey. Nobody gets everything in this life.
Somehow always haunting days like this is the terror that I will one day have a strained or non-existent relationship with these boys. I know that just can’t happen...but...I never imagined it would happen in my life, either. And yet here we are. Will they one day describe me to a therapist as cold, distant, narcissistic? Will my general impatience and exhaustion at times be the only thing they remember about me? Will the daily hugs and kisses and “I love you”s get lost in the ether like so many forgotten preschool fingerprint projects?
Will I be gone by the time they’re adult enough to see me as separate from them, a human who lived a long life before them and who had a whole secret world of my inner thoughts they could only remotely imagine?
I just want what every parent wants - I want them to be good people. I want them to be happy, at least some of the time. I want them to not hate me.
This week I saw the movie Tully, which was a raw and honest look at motherhood, the young girl still trapped in us, the unbearable, complex love we have for these little creatures even as they daily drive us slowly insane. A friend asked on Facebook if people ever regret having their children. Most of the parents answered what I would have - you regret and then un-regret it a million times a day. They are wonderful. They are terrible. Both of these things are true.
We are the most profound relationship in their lives. Sometimes the weight of this is unbearable.
I was holding up pretty well until, driving home from the last party, Morrissey’s “Yes I Am Blind” came on my phone’s shuffle, a song which always symbolizes the first time I cut my mother out of my life due to her profound selfishness when I was nineteen. It always gets me, still. I thought of skipping it but then decided to let it play on - I needed a good cry, and I had one.
You’re just like me,
And your life has not even begun
You’re just like me, you’re just like me,
And your life has not even begun...
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