Mothering

At some point when I was about halfway through grad school, my mother came to visit me. I don’t remember what the occasion was, but what I remember clearly was what she said when we were on our way to lunch.

We were walking up the street to a restaurant when she said, “When you write about me, be kind.”

It shocked me. She rarely said anything so personal and direct, and I felt like she could somehow see the future.

When I was an undergrad, I began a story with the line: “If you ever known my grandmother, then you’d have a good idea of what it was that went into the making of my mother, and then of course, eventually me.”

It was the start of what I’d hoped would be a novel and my writing mentor at the time told me that it was a good first line. The working title: Notes to an Unknown Psychologist.

But my mother didn’t know I’d written that, and by the time she’d asked me to be kind in my writing about her, I was already working on my thesis, a series of interconnected short stories, some of which I was writing to be not just kind to her. I was writing to avenge her.

She never knew that, either.

I wanted to have a closer relationship with her. She was a difficult person, in some ways. She didn’t let many people in. She wanted to visit me on Mother’s Day, one year. She took the bus to Boston and took me out to the Parker House for lunch. It was a grey, drizzly day but she wanted to take pictures of me, so we went to the Public Garden after where she took pictures. I remember being annoyed.

When I think of that now, I am mortified. I can’t believe my selfishness.

I never thought I would be mother, primarily because I didn’t think anyone would want that with me. Waiting until one is 37 to start a family is challenging. As I always say to people: Yes, you can have kids later, but it isn’t the easiest path. There were two losses. But then, two healthy kids. I was 40 and almost 43.

It’s Mother’s Day. My mother never knew my kids. I never knew what it would be like to have her support during those years. I think she would have adored them.

Over the years, I feel like I’ve come to understand her better than I did in my twenties. I know that she was not a wanted child. Her own mother told her that she was an accident, which set everything in motion. I can’t imagine ever telling a child that they weren’t wanted. She suffered shame which she carried like a ball and chain. Her alcoholism. Her child born during that time.

She may have had a hard time saying it to us, but I know she loved us more than anything. Others told us how proud she was.

I have tried to channel the best of her. I grow raspberries because she wanted to but could never get them to flourish. I make her fudge sauce and her spritz cookies. I document everything with pictures, and I learned how having a dog is a better companion than many people.

Sometimes, I think about how much she loved us, and knowing she wasn’t loved or wanted by her own mother, is amazing.

On Mother’s Day, I think of her but even more so, I think about mothering. How important it is to nurture and be nurtured. There are many stereotypes about mothers. My mother never fit those and neither do I. I am proud that we have that in common.

She worried about me being kind, but she was able in her own way to show me more love than she had ever known. That’s a pretty damn fine legacy.

Peace