Mother’s Day Chillaxing

Tags

mother's day, stepmothers

I started this post a week ago, but life intervened and has been full steam every since.  It’s that kind of spring.

Years ago I came to dread Mother’s Day, not because I had to come up with a gift idea for my mother, but because I was a stepmother and the day seemed designed to rub my face in the fact that, although I mothered, I was not considered a real mom by much of the world.

How our world has changed in the last two decades.  I am not saying stepmothers have lost their evil fairy tale image or that they are universally recognized as parents who contribute to their children’s upbringing.  Our society does, however, recognize a wider variety of family structures.

Very importantly, my stepchildren are adults.  And so, finally, I think am I.

Our oldest shared Mother’s Day with me via text, but it was early in the morning.

Our second oldest called and left a voice mail, but the next day she gave me a card in which she referred to me as a mother.  Not the mother, but a mother.  I felt like an a ten-year-old girl who finally gets the pony she always wanted for her birthday.

My oldest biological child gave me a card that “Dad made me go get” and my youngest made the highlight of my morning by aging a character in her Sim game to include forehead wrinkled, crow’s feet, and laugh lines so it would like like me.

All those years I was hypersensitive to what I saw as my stepchildren’s slights

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and, what slights there were either came from their being kids or were born of the horrid competitive atmosphere I helped create.  What I was missing was that every mom’s Mother’s Day is awful–awful gifts, awful breakfasts, awful stress, awful expectations.   I was also missing that every mom’s Mother’s Day is awesome–awesome that someone loves you enough to try to live up to unrealistic expectations of showing all of their appreciation all day one day a year when really their thanks comes in rare beautiful moments–when your teenage son squeezes into the rocking chair next to you when there are open seats in the living room–when your daughter throws her arms around your waist and says you’re the best–when your son says “I should have listened to you guys years ago”–when your daughter sends you ridiculous snapchats because she knows you’ll get the joke and won’t think she’s a dork.

Mother’s Day is still not my favorite day.  Most of us expect too much of it.  But Mother’s Day is no longer one of my dreaded days, either.  Like all days, it’s what you make of it.  Everyone else–ex-wives, mothers-in-law, haters of various types–they only have the power you give them.  Does that make me an adult?

Mother’s Day

Tags

mother's day, mothers

Two of my children began in my womb.  Two came into my life with my husband.

I knew the two who began in my womb from day one.  When they were born I examined their fingers and toes and undressed them and looked at their skin, learned all of their blemishes.  I fed and cleaned them.  I was their primary comfort when the world set them spinning.

For the other two, I was part of the world spinning.  I was a discomfort at first.  I may still be a discomfort.  I never saw them as babies.  I never changed diapers or fed bottles, much less a breast.  I was never sure when it was ok to hug them and when it was something they just put up with.

So my knowing of my children in this way is different.  Where I feel free to stick my finger in one son’s ear and show him the icky ear wax, I would never think of it with the other.

However, I have watched and loved and agonized over all of my children, and perhaps the two who did not begin in my womb more than the others.  Perhaps because I don’t have the same physical connection that allows me to pull them close and set everything ok.  I know their facial expressions and how they are windows into their hearts if one only knows how to read them.

I know their histories.  I don’t know all of their histories for two of my children, but neither does the woman in whose womb they began because their lives have been shared between us.  As they get older, this seems less strange, less foreign because their lives are being shared with many others and soon we will be one small part in the big kaleidoscope that is their lives.

In my teens and twenties my kaleidoscope was focused on my friends and the love of my life.  When my friends and that love left me, it refocused on my parents.  When I found a new love and had my own children, my parents moved to the periphery once more, but, as my children age, they make return visits to the center.

What does it all mean?  Our children are born and we know them intimately, absolutely.  Some children come into our lives and we know them intimately, carefully.  As they grow, they pull away and we know them more carefully, less intimately.  They go out of focus, but they never truly leave.

I am watching my older two children go out of focus and it hurts.  It’s like giving birth, but having them ripped from my chest.  However, when we give birth and they are torn from our bodies, we have that immediate reconnection as their skin touches ours and all returns to right with the world.  This going out of focus, this ripping from my chest offers no such immediate balm.  Only my own history suggests that they will return.

The fact that I have to go through this two more times is terrifying.  More terrifying than the knowledge of giving birth when you become pregnant a second time.  They give you pain killers for child birth.

I think God knew how hard I was going to take this.  So he sent my youngest, who still throws her arms around my neck and asks me to snuggle.

I love you, babies, and I love you & admire you more than I can say, mom.  Happy mother’s day.