Mothers’ Day

Maybe motherhood means honoring one’s mother.
~Sheila Heti

I’ve been thinking about my mother a lot this week. It’s not that I don’t think about her every day, anyway, but she’s been in my mind more than normal lately.

My mom passed away 20 years ago last September. Even now there are times when I think, I need to call Mom and tell her XXX. I believe most of us who have lost our moms think that. There is something about the mother-child bond that never really ends, is there?

My Mother’s Wish

When I was a child, Mom and I were very close. She loved being a mother, playing with me, doing things with me. She taught me to color and to play jacks. We baked cookies and bread, made homemade pasta or ravioli.  She taught me to sew, standing over me as I struggled keeping the seams straight on her prized Singer sewing machine. Motherhood was the most important part of my mother’s life.

My Aunt Bon reiterated that to me on the day we buried my mother. “Your mother always wanted children,” she told me. “One of her boyfriends broke up with her because she always wanted to babysit Eddie and Marge (my cousins) rather than go out.” Since my mother had told me how she loved to watch my cousins when they were babies, I knew Aunt Bon was right.

Mom got her wish; she was pregnant three times, losing the first baby during her pregnancy. Not long after, she was pregnant, again, with me. Three years later, she had my brother. I remember going to the hospital to pick the two of them up and walking down the hall carrying one of her gifts—probably hoping it was for me.

My Mother’s Other Wish

Once I got married, my mom really cared about nothing more than becoming a grandmother. She was in heaven when I had Jason and Karen, my sister-in-law, had Michelle and Melanie. If being a mother was Mom’s cake, being a grandmother was her icing. As she had done with me, she taught the kids to bake cookies and make pasta. Anytime she could be with them in any capacity was a good time for her.

The absolute best photo I have of Mom is the one above. We had taken her to Disneyland, and my young niece was pulling her along when Goofy stopped to take a photo with them. I snapped a photo not realizing that I was capturing Mom’s one moment of pure, unadulterated joy. 

“Do you see the smile on Mom’s face?” my brother asked me after looking at the photo. “It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her smile like that.” 

I guess that smile and look of simple is how I want to remember her even though it was not really her on most days. She really wanted nothing more than to be with us. It gives me comfort to know that her spirit still is.

Happy Mothers’ Day.