On being a mother...

Today has been a beautiful spring-like day, the sun has shone, I have felt the warmth on my skin and although I realize it is still winter and we desperately need more rain, I am grateful. If I had been cooped up indoors, in dismal weather, it would have been harder. It is seven years today since the phone call, the message left on the answering machine, in the early hours of the morning, that mom was dead.

I allow myself to think about it more often on the anniversary, and on her birthdays. I cannot pretend that it is normal yet, it has had to become the new normal, because it is fact, but there is nothing normal about it. How many times have there been when I would have loved to pick up the phone and just have a little chat? We all have good days and bad days in our parenting and how I would have loved to know how she did it all with five kids, when there are days that I am pulling my hair out at three. They are great kids, just kids being kids, but some days my patience is much thinner, or I am more tired and more easily frustrated and to be able to be reassured by someone as safe as a mother, your mother, not just another woman or a friend, that that is really ok, without judgement would be wonderful.

I long to hear the stories of myself at the same age and the things that maybe I did that would drive her crazy, or my brothers or sister (after all, I'm sure I was the perfect child). I do not remember my mother ever shouting at me...ever! Was she more patient? Have I just blocked it from my memory? So many questions and wondering that will, forever, go unanswered.

A little earlier this afternoon my sweet Asia came to the door with her hand behind her back and told me she had a surprise. It was a little bunch of weedy yellow flowers, that she presented me with a great joy. I was so happy and blessed that even while she was out playing with her friends she would think of me and find pleasure in stopping to do something that she knew I would love.  I love it! I love her! I love them!

Did my mother have those moments? Were we that same blessing? I really do hope so. She was not a woman overly expressive with her emotions but I hope that we brought her that joy. I hope that she enjoyed being a mother as much as I do. I know she did, she was always the one who would tell me, in my years of being adamant that I did not want children, that it would be different when I had my own. She knew!

It is strange to think that she would have felt about us, as I feel about my children. It makes me see her so differently, knowing the love that I have for my kids, is what she had for me. There is so much that she would have loved to see and hear, but instead I just have some memories and my gratitude for all that she did for us.