Happy Mother's Day

A clear majority of my friends would say that I love my mother more than any other person on Earth. The only dispute I would have with that is that I romantically love my partner just as much and that my brotherly love for my sister is equivalent, even if it's different. Thank goodness that I don't have to choose. I truly believe that the best mothers' hearts grow larger with each child and that there is no limit to our ability to love others unless it is self-imposed.

I can tell my mother almost anything (I spare her intimate details about my partner's and my relationship as soon as it involves anything sexual or otherwise qualifies as "too much information") and she almost invariably finds a way to make me feel better about myself. She was and remains my cheerleader-in-chief. She pushed me and my sister to do sometimes difficult but important things and did whatever she could to smooth the way for us. Often, it involved letting us go our own ways and left her more physically isolated from us as we moved, got different jobs and became busy adults. She has never been afraid to say those were difficult things to do but she did them anyway and knew - and still knows - she made the right decisions.

I'll admit (I've already discussed this with her) that I sometimes was embarrassed when Mom would blow into my elementary classrooms dressed like Erin Brockovich and deliver cookies when it was her turn to do so. She doesn't apologize anymore for that. I'm glad. By the time my parents' marriage was over, so was her desire to let other people define who she was and truly believed - but rarely said it aloud - that despite 35 years of teaching English, her biggest accomplishments were helping get her kids into the most rarified places they could be. I don't ever recall her trashing other women for choosing a different path or a different way of parenting unless she was being attacked for not doing things that seemed so standard. Even then, she blamed herself for not trusting other women enough to confide in them. She lost trust in men, too, ultimately concluding that they were often weaker than she was, and almost pitying them.

That's not to say she didn't try to fit in. She did. Unfortunately for her contemporaries and fortunately for me and my sister, she didn't begin to fit in until she hit her 60s. I think that happened because, by then, women who had either shunned her or belittled her saw the results of what she very privately spent so much time and energy doing. How do you raise a lawyer and doctor with middle class wages, no woodie station wagon and very, very little baking or knowing where the vacuum cleaner is on any given day? It sounds like a tough question but it's actually pretty easy. You set priorities, talk to your kids, cry with them, laugh with them and tell them long before it was ever said in a movie theatre that "my kids will never sit at the back of the bus."

Last year, I recall overhearing a conversation on the day of my sister's rehearsal dinner which was being staged at her house under a tent in the back yard. She said that she couldn't believe how smart her kids were and that it scared her to death. How was she going to handle what she believed were 'these incredible gifts? I felt this overwhelming responsibility to make sure they got what they needed and wasn't at all sure I could handle it.'

She did.

To every mother who loves her kids, I wish you a Happy Mother's Day. I don't need to say it to Mom because she knows exactly what I think.