It is the morning
of Mother’s Day 2013. We have a dozen people coming over for brunch, and that
tomato and cucumber salad is not going to chop itself, but I have to write this
post.
The Gruffalo and I have six adult children between us, yet no grandchildren.
This is a fact that I bring up now and then to Kage, BeanBeanMoreBean, Smallest
of All, The Mogul, Gandhi and Matisyahu, especially after I have spent time
around a baby or a toddler. I am terribly subtle about it—a quick text to all
six that reads only “GRANDCHILDREN!!!” is an example of my restraint in this
area.
Despite my gentle
teasing, though, I do not want anyone
(my kids or anyone else’s kids) to have children before they are completely
ready to do so. Parenthood is unrelenting hard work, and it never, ever ends.
Even when you are totally prepared, you are never, ever ready. To paraphrase
Debra Winger’s character in 'Terms of Endearment': As hard as you think it’s
going to be, you end up wishing it was that easy.
With that in
mind, I have to salute the Moms in my life before I start preparing brunch.
First of all,
here’s to women who become mothers without raising a child. Both of my sisters,
Barf and KK, have become mothers to adult children (and, thence, grandmothers--grrrrr!) through two completely
different sets of circumstances, and they have done so with admirable grace and
total commitment. Spending time with an infant is delicious, and women who step
into motherhood do not get to begin their demanding role with this joyful
interval. And, as I mentioned above, parenthood never, ever ends. Just because
a child has become an adult does not mean that the challenges of mothering that
person come to an end. With adulthood there are new and unthinkably complex issues
for grown children and their parents to navigate. I raise a mimosa to women who
willingly step into mothering adult children who they had no part in raising.
And here’s to
my Mom. She is, as anyone in the family will tell you, magical. When my father
was intermittently unemployed during my childhood, she somehow managed always to
have money set aside for the necessities and the silly little luxuries that are
vital to teenagers, like the perfect shade of light blue nail polish to match a
home-made middle-school graduation dress. Even more importantly, she always had
the time to make the dress and the time to drive around to find said blue nail
polish. (Note to anyone younger than 40: in the 1970’s, you could have any
color of polish you wanted as long as it was red or pink.)
Besides her
money- and time-management skills, Mom has an uncanny ear for languages. When
my sisters and I learned Spanish, Mom was always able to completely understand
what we were saying. She could only answer in English, but our plans to speak
Spanish in order to keep secrets from her were for naught. The same phenomenon occurred
when my sisters and I resorted to Double-Dutch, a made up language that
thwarted all of our middle school teachers but was no match for Mom.
In the
kitchen, Mom is a wizard. If she tastes a dish she is able to deconstruct it
and re-create it with eerie precision. She reads cook books like I read novels
and she is always coming up with something new, while retaining all of the old
favorites in her repertoire. She is also able to improvise brilliantly. Two
words: Cheesy potatoes. Or, going back several years, a treat that prompted a
neighbor to call one Saturday morning to ask “How do you make that #@$%&
melted cheese on toast?”
My sisters
and I were the recipients of all of this love, attention and cheese, as were
all of our friends. Mom must have fed a regiment of kids when we were
growing up, again doing so on an impossibly tight budget. She baked non-stop for weeks prior to Christmas and Easter, then distributed
boxes of cookies to neighbors and friends and the priests at our parish. One of her
springtime specialties, butterfly cookies, always caused a small, decidedly
un-Christian scuffle in the rectory when she dropped them off.
And, although
this is an incredibly long and complicated story that I will save for another
blog post, Mom is also one of those women who stepped into parenting an adult
child. The adult child is her own first-born. This puts her
in yet another category, women who give birth to a baby knowing that the child
will be raised by another woman. These are certainly mothers who deserve
recognition today, too; women who make motherhood possible for someone else.
This entry
has gone on longer than I planned and the brunch prep must begin now, but not
before I raise a Pimm’s cup to Mom, a terrific mother and one of the bravest
women I know.
Feliz Dia de
las Madres, Mamacita, Itheguy lutheguve yahthegoo!
