Obligatory Mother's Day Post

I remember my first Mother’s Day as a mom.  Mother’s Day 1991, I was pregnant.  I knew that would be my last year as a non-mom and I was really looking forward to Mother’s Day 1992.  I wanted those hand-print flower pots and the macaroni-glued-to-cardboard picture frames.  I wanted to put baby footprints on the refrigerator and I wanted the glue-stick-and-pipe-cleaner cards.  I have been so blessed over the past two decades to get more than my share of those adorable toddler/preschool Mother’s Day gifts.  I have most of them still and cherish them more today than the day I got them.  I am grateful to have children (and a husband) who honor me throughout the year but I do really look forward to Mother’s Day because I like the whole “fuss over mom” aspect of it.  I like having my children close by me and I like having them tell me how much they love me, and I like having the chance to tell them  how much I love them.

This year is going to be my first Mother’s Day since 1992 that I haven’t had my children with me.  I understood this day would come, but it doesn’t make it easier.  Transitions usually aren’t easy, and this one is hitting me hard.  I know I’ll get to see my daughter just two days later, and I hope and pray that I get a Skype from Africa so that I can see my son, but a Skype conversation and a 2-day delayed hug isn’t the same. 

This year, tho, probably because I’m trying not to focus on my childless state this Mother’s Day, I’ve been thinking about my own mother.  My mother and I had a contentious relationship for most of my childhood and as those childhood years moved into the even more tumultuous teen years, our relationship suffered even more.  Eventually things came to an ugly head and then before we could make our peace, we lost that opportunity.  The way things were when I was in my teens is the way things are forever frozen.  I regret that.  I regret that she never had the opportunity to know me as an adult, to know my husband and my children.  I regret that she never got to know how I turned out and that she never got to see me as anything other than a headstrong, moody, rebellious teenager.  I also regret that I never got to know her as a person.  I never knew her as anything other than who she was when I was younger and I never saw her except through the eyes of a headstrong, moody, rebellious teenager.  I wonder if she and I were to meet today, not as angry mother/daughter, but as two adult women, if we’d get along.  Would we realize how much we have in common?  How similar we are?  Would there be a bond, a connection? 

Unfortunately, that is something that I will never know.  I carry that burden with me, and I wonder and play “what if” in my mind.  I think that we’d have ended up being friends, had we been able to work past those angry, confrontational years, but sadly, those angry, confrontational years were the ending point of our relationship.

When I look at my own children, grown and adults and making their way in this world, I feel sadness that my mother never got to see me that way.  She never saw me as a married woman, as a mother, as an independent person.  She never knew that I grew out of that rebellious teenage phase and that I ended up giving my heart to the Lord and dedicating my life to Him. 

I also have tried to learn from the mistakes she and I made in our mother/child relationship and I swore that I’d not make those same mistakes with my own children.  I can safely say that I didn’t.  I made different mistakes, other mistakes, bigger mistakes … but not THOSE mistakes. 

While I’d give anything to, once again, receive a handprint flower print for Mother’s Day, or a macaroni and pipe cleaner picture frame, or a “cereal made with orange juice” breakfast in bed, this year I also find myself looking back further than the past 20 years and I find myself wishing I had the opportunity to give my own mother a macaroni and pipe cleaner picture frame.  I don’t know that she’d appreciate it (she certainly didn’t, when I was 8) but I’d like to think that time would have mellowed her, and me, and that we’d have a mother/daughter relationship that would bring us mutual joy and laughter and not heartache and tears.

When, on Tuesday, I get to hug my daughter, I am going to hug her a little tighter for a little while longer.  I am going to cherish the Skype call I get from my son and I am going to hold his voice in my heart until I can hold him in my arms.  I am going to savor every moment I have with my own children and I am going to enjoy being the mom of grown children.  I am going to do these things because I can; and because I want to instill memories in my children that are good ones, pleasant ones, beneficial ones. 

When I see grown women with their moms, I am a bit jealous.  But then I realize that while I’ll never be the “daughter” in the “mother/daughter go shopping or get their nails done or whatever” scenario, I can and WILL be the “mother” in that scenario, and I’m looking forward to that!!

So this Mother’s Day, I’m going to be busy.  I’m going to be missing my son and my daughter, I’m going to be grateful for the relationship I do have with them,  I’m going to be nostalgic and sad for the relationship I didn’t have with my own mother and I’m going to be anticipating the relationship I am going to have with my children as time goes on.  Wow.  That’s a lot of stuff for one day!