Mother’s Day

Here we are again. Another Mother’s Day weekend to gut through. They come every year, no matter what. The good news is now that my mother (usually referred to as Gayle) is no longer this side of the dirt. This year I don’t have to read dozens of cards trying to find just one that isn’t a lie. I finally just bought a box of blank notecards. I could write a simple, “Happy Mother’s Day”, and be done with it. And, if I’m being honest, if I’d decided to jot something–anything-else down, my handwriting has long been illegible. By illegible I mean almost no one can read it. I truly cannot remember not writing. A quick look at my index finger will show a good-sized writer’s knot. That’s what it used to be called. Now the doctor just calls it some kind of arthritis. Whatever. It’s still illegible.

I cherish my sons….Brendan (35), Bailey (23), and Grayson (12). I picture Bailey walking to the beach and I swear I can hear him say: I LOVE the sound of flip flops! In my mind’s eye I see Brendan, very still and quiet in his captain’s bed, as I sing The Promised Land. Then there’s Grayson, or G as we mostly call him. I can’t not see him as the baby we didn’t know but had promised to take care of. Each of them beautiful in the way only I see them. This comes with a melancholy kind of sadness I can’t shake off. I can’t drive away from it. Or swim myself out of it. It’s there and it’s not going away any time soon.

I have spent my life trying not to be the mother I had. Sometimes I wonder if I might’ve missed the point.

I wanted them not to know what real fear feels like. I wanted them to be certain I would always be in their corner no matter what. I wanted them to be secure in the knowledge that I loved them. Period. No conditions. No excuses. And I still want those things. The problem is I fail every single day. My boys know this. I’m not sure they know that I know it.

Every sharp exchange, every word said in anger, every single disappointed sigh….they see it. Feel it. But they don’t know I feel it too. Not like they do. No. I feel it in my soul. The way you feel when you’ve been entrusted with something holy and you somehow screwed it up. Many times I can’t get out of my own way with them. I see it, but I can’t stop myself.

Three boys. Three different decades. Each one calls me a different name. Bren calls me Madre. Bay calls me Mama. G calls me Mom. I don’t know why it worked out that way. I didn’t tell them what to call me. Except that one time Brendan called me by my given name. Let’s just say in Appalachia we don’t do that. It’s disrespectful. And I’m still sorry for that, Brendan, but I learned a long time ago there are some things you can’t take back. And I know that doesn’t track with my previous note that I often called my mother by her given name. Just try to understand that she was never a mother to me and did not deserve that title of respect. It wasn’t a secret.

I want to say here that Gayle was a much better grandparent than she ever was a parent, but I’d be lying. I always hid any type of medication when she was coming to visit because she was a drug addict. She’d been an addict since my earliest memories of her. But there was one time when she drank nearly the entire bottle of liquid pain meds with codeine that one of the boys was taking while recovering from surgery. I discovered it when she left. I noticed something syrupy was spilled on the counter. It only took a moment for me to follow the syrup and then to realize what had happened. She denied it, of course, but it was pointless. I knew what had happened and I made sure it never happened again.

During the early years of our marriage, she would come to visit pretty regularly. We’d make a big meal. Then as we ate, she’d start telling Tony about how she’d made sure she raised me not to depend on a man. That she knew going to college would mean I could take care of myself. Late one night after we’d all gone to bed, Tony looked at me and asked, “Do you know how hard it is for me to sit there while she says those things?” I replied that it couldn’t possibly be as hard for him as it was for me. (Back to why I call her Gayle.)

So what she really taught me was that the only person I could depend on was me. And that is why I went to college. Well, that and the promise of food every day and a roof over my head every night. It was a pretty low bar.

But that’s not the case for my boys. They do know I love them. They do know I will always be here for them. They also know I’m human. But I will never stop trying to be the mother they deserve. Not sure I’ll ever get there. But I’ll keep trying.

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone who stood in the gap for me and helped me to get this far. Many who never knew the ordinary things they did from a place of love were extraordinary to me. All love.