People far more eloquent than I have written about mothers and why they’re so special, but three words immediately come to my mind: nurture, safety and love.
The dictionary definition of mother is concise: “A woman in relation to her child or children.” In my opinion this definition is somewhat lacking as mothers are so much more. Actually, there may not be another word with deeper, more copious connotations in the English language than “mother.”
Agatha Christie, the English novelist, makes no mystery of the bond between mother and child: “A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity; it dates all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.”
People far more eloquent than I have written about mothers and why they’re so special, but three words immediately come to my mind: nurture, safety and love.
This Mother’s Day will be another in the line of firsts in my life — A Mother’s Day when two bedrooms yawn empty.
I loved Mother’s Day when two little boys were not yet tall enough to reach the highest of the kitchen cabinets, not yet courageous to cross the street in front of our home alone, not yet dependable enough to manage their lives without me.
I cherished their dependence, even if such a confession revealed me as the unsatisfied nurturer that I was. Honestly, I cannot remember exactly when I ceased being stunned by the very presence of these two males, and frantic with the belief that I had so little time before they “fly the coop” as their generations put it.
I never told them back in the days when they spilled their cereal, and left the kitchen table in a mess that they were my outstanding preoccupation.
I never told them that in spite of all the carryings-on in the women’s movement, not a day went by when I did not think about their births. I carried these happenings with me like snapshots fading in the sun—blurry but nevertheless always there.
Now when prismatic pleasures of knowing that my two sons have peaked, just when we seem to have understood each other and presumably past the uncertain terrain of early manhood, with its now deafening perpetual reproaches of “you just don’t understand me,” they have left.
My sadness at their departure is doubtlessly incorporated with pride at their being ready to go. Whatever courage I lack is not lacking in them and I am left behind feeling oddly like an only child, someone bereft of her siblings and longing for one of them to be back and fill the room with laughter.
This Mother’s Day there will be no vying between the two as to who will give their gift first, no solemn presentations. There perhaps will be hurried phone calls, and perhaps floral arrangements wired by a company that shamelessly overcharges for the service. But I will get through Mother’s Day 2018 with a stiff upper lip.
I will caution myself that mothers who are unable to let go are egocentric females who cling to ghost like lost amours. I will probably allow myself one good cry behind a closed bedroom door, because after all this is the first Mother’s day when two of my best friends are not within hugging distance.
By next year it will be easier. By then I can attest that I would have most assuredly, positively absolutely have absorbed the bottom line of motherhood, that loving and caring means holding fast for a while then letting birds fly free.
Happy Mother’s Day To All.
