A Few Thoughts This Mother's Day

When I was a child, Mother's Day didn't appear complicated.

Teachers gave us assignments that would provide us with handmade gifts to take home that weekend. Those teachers instructing us to make cute little paper flower projects and tracings of our hands seemed to assume that everyone had both a mom and a dad at home. I wasn't aware of any kids from divorced homes when I was small. Back then in our tiny Detroit suburb there were no visible variations on what a family was expected to be--with the exception of single mothers, who by the 80s I noticed were generally considered lacking at best, and the source of all of society's ills at worst.

I'm sure whatever cards or acknowledgments my brothers and I made for our mom on Mother's Day were woefully inadequate. How could they not be? My mom was (and is) amazing, and I don't understand looking back at how she did everything she did. I really don't. I'm a pale imitation of her on my best day when it comes to mothering, and there are never enough words to convey what we've been given by having her as our mom.

But time and age cast us in new roles, and a range of different families have finally become visible. For a variety of reasons, Mother's Day is no longer uncomplicated.

Let's start with loss. My husband's mother died a year ago. He tried to call her last Mother's Day and she didn't answer. He figured out a day or so later that she had passed away at home in her bed. He has no one to call today. I don't know how to help him with that, other than to hug him and hope he's okay. 

For the mothers I know who have lost children... I can't imagine they brush this day off as another greeting card holiday. I can't dwell on that thought very long without coming undone.

I know people who have dysfunctional mothers. That's a whole different struggle, and a loss in its own way.

Then there are the welcome variations that change the shape of Mother's Day when it comes to those school projects. I didn't know any gay couples with children when I was growing up. I'm glad my children can't say the same, because we know some lovely families with two moms, or two dads, and they are wonderful role models for my kids as well a their own. I'm mystified by people who fear their children knowing such families exist, because whatever harm they're concerned about is only in their minds. 

I know people whose lives were enriched by being part of a blended family. I don't know how single moms manage, and they deserve support and respect. I think every Mother's Day about families coping with separations like we lived through when Ian was deployed.

The composition of a family isn't as important as compassion, support and love. That's the difference between a family that's good and one that isn't, not anything to do with race, religion, or gender.

So I do not take for granted on this particular Mother's Day, that I was able to give my mom a call, and that all three of my children happen to be home. They brought me breakfast in bed, got Indian food for dinner, and picked me flowers. I loved all of it.

I will admit, I kind of miss the assigned school projects. I loved all the little ceramic dishes and bead bracelets and heart necklaces. But the finest idea any of the teachers ever had in my children's elementary school was the one who had my youngest write me a letter on pretty stationery.

A few years ago, things were so fraught between me and one of my kids that I gave up on Mother's Day. I didn't see the point if I was failing at my role so badly. I declared it "just a day" and told everyone not to worry about it. The baby of the family ignored that. She brought me breakfast in bed, and when I asked why, she said it "felt important." And she gave me her school assignment letter which listed all the things I do that matter, and she ended it with, "I love you. We all do." Which to this day makes me cry because I needed it so much in that moment.

Now we are in a different moment. Mother's Day is back to being a sweet excuse to defer to me all day for decisions about what to eat and do on a quiet Sunday at home. It's peaceful again. But not ordinary. And richer for the ubderstanding of how complicated it could be.

The Other Mothers

I've always been irritated with people who are quick to dismiss Mother's Day as a greeting card holiday.  Holidays are what you choose to make them.  The commercialization of certain holidays can indeed get out of hand to the point where the real sentiments get lost, but that's the fault of capitalism and the juvenile insistence of the average person in this country that everything be fun or dramatic rather than meaningful.

Major Christian holidays in this country get a lot of attention, and I know members of minority faiths who resent how little the mainstream knows about other holidays when they come around, but I've often felt they should be a bit grateful that the relative obscurity shields them from some of the nonsense, and they don't see important traditions reduced to another excuse to buy unnecessary things.  My kids were surprised to learn Easter was a religious holiday at all, because they've only known it as egg hunts and candy.  For us that works, again, because we can make holidays what we like, and for some of them that means making them silly.

But even secular holidays aren't immune from further secularization.  Mother's Day in this country was eventually denounced by its creator who found its reduction from something meaningful to something used as a marketing ploy to be deplorable.  However, we can pick what we like and reject the rest, just as we can on any other day.  The tricky part is navigating the larger context and being prepared for the various meanings any holiday has for others.  We can't assume it's the same for everyone.

Mother's Day can be complicated because mothers are complicated.

Fire and Flowers

There was a fire in our neighborhood the other night.  It destroyed a century old building that at one time was a corner grocery store but in recent years was simply a somewhat dilapidated residence and band practice space.  No one was seriously hurt and the fire did not spread.

It happened around 11 at night the evening before Mother's Day.  Aden happened to be up late reading when she noticed all the sirens and flashing lights on her side of the house and came and got us.  She was in tears.

Mona and Quinn slept through everything, but there were dozens of emergency vehicles gathered around the building only two blocks away.  From Aden's second floor window we could see the flames leaping through the roof, and the smoke billowing into the sky flickering red and blue from the frantic lights below.  It was scary.

Mother's Day and Movies

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day! 

Mine was the best ever (with the possible exception of the first one I got to spend as a mother with a five month old baby Aden in my arms, because there is nothing quite like certain firsts).  It was a day filled with lots of nice moments and bookended with movies.

My kids made me breakfast in bed, which as sweet as it was, actually put me in an uncomfortable quandary. 

They have breakfast in bed down to a kind of science, where they know to clean up the kitchen as part of the present, and they give thought to what might be too messy (for instance, they always serve me water in a water bottle to avoid spills).  This morning they served me this:

That's a bowl of clementines all peeled, and a couple of slices of something we call a David Eyer Pancake (that they baked themselves) along with an overabundance of powdered sugar on the side to sprinkle on it.  (There is also the aforementioned water bottle, a little bouquet of things from our front garden, and the appropriate silverware and a napkin all on a tray that belonged to my grandmother.  This is several steps up from when Aden was three and she served me an uncooked egg in the shell with a fork a flower.)

So what was the quandary?  Well, I'm doing 30 days again of no grains, dairy, legumes, or sugar.  I fell off that 'paleo' diet wagon a couple of months ago and my weight started to creep back up and my headaches returned.  I miss bread and cheese and chocolate but I can't take the headaches anymore.  I want to do a whole month off of those items again and then experiment with adding things back one at a time so I can pinpoint what my problem might be.  I'm on Day 13.  And my adorable children specially cooked me a meal of flour mixed with milk and garnished with pure sugar.  Do I choose my own self-imposed food rules, or create a Mother's Day exception?

I really agonized.  And then I told them I couldn't eat it.  I thanked them, and ate the clementines, and then asked if I could feed the David Eyer Pancake to them instead, which turned out to be fun.  I haven't lifted a fork to any of their mouths in years, so they pretended they were little birds and each took turns having bites until the plate was clean.  Then Aden made me an omelet--with a tiny bit of cheese.  That I decided to make an exception for because come on.  (Cheese was the first thing I was going to add back into my diet anyway, so why not.)

I also got some amazing gifts:

Quinn made me a tissue flower, Mona let me have the duct tape 'angel dragon' she made a couple of weeks ago that I've been admiring, and Aden bought a watch from Target and replaced the band with one she crocheted herself.  They all pitched in to make the card.  I don't even know how to describe how much I love all of this.

Next we sat on my bed and folded laundry while watching episodes of Phineas and Ferb.  (We call these "Fold Phineas and Ferb Parties" and it makes laundry a pretty enjoyable event in our house.)

Then I made all the kids get out of my bed for a while and gave some thought to what I would like to do that would be just for me for a change.  And I picked archery.  I took archery lessons back in 2005 just because it was always something I wanted to try, and I loved it.  Aden used to come with me in her pretty little dresses and help collect my arrows out of the hay bale targets at the public park and it was so cute.  But then Ian got deployed and that was the end of that.  My bow and arrows have been gathering dust ever since.

Using the bow stringer

Until today!  But it almost didn't happen just because it had been so long I didn't remember how to string up my recurve bow.  I turned to YouTube where several different people demonstrated stepping through the bow and bracing one of the limbs against a leg, etc. and none of it rang a bell.  I tried to copy what they were doing, but no luck.  Then I found a different guy who said the bracing against the leg method was the wrong way to go and he was leaving one end of the string slipped down a ways, bending the bow, and sliding that end all the way up into place.  That looked more familiar, but still no luck.  After about half an hour of messing with my bow and trying to jog my memory and getting ready to give up, I looked at one more video and found a guy who said what I really needed was a bow stringer.  A bow stringer....  That method involved hooking a string to each end of the bow and standing on it to pull the limbs far enough to slide one of the ends where it should be.  THAT was starting to look familiar.  So I went to my arrow quiver and emptied it out and I'll be damned if I don't own a bow stringer!  Ha!  The second I saw it, it all came back to me.  Nothing to it.

So off to the park!  My kids loved it there.  Aden and Quinn retrieved my arrows, Mona collected broken bits of balloon from around the targets and created some pretend cooking game with them.  The dog even had fun running free until it was time for me to shoot and it seemed safer to put him back on the leash.  I was pleased to discover my aim is actually not bad considering how long it's been.  I think next time I'm feeling down I will head back out to the range to clear my head.  There's something nice about concentrating on an activity that is simple but not easy.

Perfect weather, perfect company, and I got a chance to do something with no purpose other than it's enjoyable.  Can't ask for a better Mother's Day than that.





After the park we got the kids a pizza and left Aden in charge of everyone while Ian and I went to a movie.  We've been experimenting more often with leaving them on their own for short stretches and they do fine.  It still makes me nervous and will take some getting used to, but the idea that we have the freedom to escape to a movie from time to time is a wonderful new thing.

Now, the movies at each end of my day could not have been more different.  In the morning I watched Melancholia on my laptop, and in the afternoon Ian and I went to see The Avengers in the theater.  Melancholia is about the world ending with no hope of saving it and some question about whether it even matters.  The Avengers is about saving the world and it's all very self-important.  Melancholia moves in a slow and deliberate way, with music by Wagner to imbue everything with a gorgeous sense of tragedy, and it made me cry.  The Avengers was all explosions and smashy smashy cool things to see and it made me laugh.  Melancholia was calm as the world ended.  The Avengers was frantic as it was saved. 

I don't know if I can recommend Melancholia because it's haunting, and once you've seen it you can't unsee it.  I don't want to be responsible for someone else having to ponder elements of it the way I seem to be.  It's beautiful, but painful.  The Avengers I would recommend purely for Hawkeye shooting aliens with arrows--sometimes without even looking (man, do I need practice!)--but also the Hulk hitting things and Robert Downey Jr being born to play Tony Stark.  It's all so silly, but the best kind of silly.

My day also included cooking with my kids and my husband, watching my kids make things out of modeling chocolate, walking with them to Target, playing games with them on the computer, seeing them bike, hearing them laugh, and just being proud that I have any connection to these lovely little people at all.  My life with them isn't the extremes I saw in either movie.  It's just right.  And I'm the luckiest mom in the world.

Just when you think you know your kids... (Babble)

I spent Mothers’ Day this year under a big heap of kids.  It was an especially clingy day, which was fine, except that my hope for the day was to get one thing done.  Anything.  I have so many projects lying unfinished everywhere it gets me depressed if I think about them, so I thought picking one and seeing it to completion would be great.  But no, that was not meant to be.  (But I suppose the same way I tend to work on Labor Day, being in total mom mode on Mothers’ Day rather than getting a break seems about right.)

That small issue aside, it was a lovely day.  Aden brought me breakfast in bed, which we shared.  (Toast, omelet, and water, plus a flower in a vase–that girl has gotten good at this!)  Then an hour later I got another breakfast in bed because Ian made waffles, so that was nice too.  The girls curled up with me for awhile to listen to a few more chapters of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz which we are trying to finish up in time for book club.  Then we did about a dozen trips around the block on bikes and a scooter.  I tried to follow Quinn because age four seems a bit young to keep pedaling out of sight, so I kept cutting through the alley in the middle of our block to head him off and keep track of where he was.  It was beautiful out, and a good day for kids to be essentially rolling along in circles (or, I guess technically squares).

(Kids pausing just long enough for me to snap a slightly blurry photo.)

I also pushed Quinn on the swing for awhile, which he will happily do forever if you are up to it.  You can push him until he literally falls asleep in the swing.  Anyway, the funny thing about our swing set is that last year when we put it in, we installed it on top of a spot where there used to be a garden.  I had someone move all the bulbs to a different area of the yard, but apparently he missed, well, LOTS, so until the tulips are done we are down one swing because the kids don’t want to hurt the flowers.

Anyway, the big event on Mothers’ Day was my girls had a violin recital.  I would have sworn to you last week that I could have written the post about it ahead of time and just scheduled it to run on the day.  They’ve had two violin recitals in the past and they both went the same way.  Aden gets nervous but overall does fine.  She usually makes some odd mistake, but after a pause plugs ahead, finishes her song, and takes her bow.  And for Aden that was pretty much how it went this time too, except that instead of fretting about having made a mistake, she saw that others also made mistakes and didn’t beat herself up about it afterward, which is good.

But Mona’s experience was new, and I never could have predicted it.  In the past Mona was the first player on the program.  She would get in front of the audience wearing her velvet dress and shuffling along carefully in her high heel shoes.  She would beam at everyone, play her song, not care if she made mistakes, smile and bow….  Mona is charming on stage and always took recitals in stride. 

But this year was different, and I’m kicking myself for not being better prepared, both as a mom and a violin teacher.  I did not grab her book before we left the house because she could not have had her piece better memorized.  She has been working on it for weeks and playing it up to 20 times a day in anticipation, but I should have known better and just brought the book along.  The other thing was I had Aden run through her piece outside before the concert to help her warm up, and I should have done the same with Mona.  But since Mona has never been nervous about performing before it didn’t occur to me.

This year Mona was third on the program.  When it was her turn to take the stage, she shuffled up in her high heels, faced the audience, and froze.  I could see it all over her face that she blanked on how the song went.  If I’d been sitting closer I would have offered her, “A, A, one, one….?”  But I couldn’t help her.  Her teacher asked if she’d like the book, but it was not the copy Mona was used to and had none of the pencil markings in it that would have jogged her memory.  She looked sadly at the book with her instrument under her chin, but didn’t know what to play.  My heart broke for her.

Her teacher kindly ushered Mona back toward her seat and announced we would try Mona’s part of the recital later in the program.  Mona took her seat between her sister and me, and pressed her mouth against my shoulder to muffle her sobs.  My poor sweet girl.
After Mona’s tears were done, I detached myself from Quinn.  Quinn is usually well behaved in public settings like concerts.  He sits still and claps politely, but at this recital he just flopped all over me and kept repeating, “This is long.  Why is this so long?”  What happened to my cooperative little guy?  In any case, after managing to convince Mona to ditch her high heels for a minute so we could more easily slip out of the hall together, we ducked out back.

I hugged her and told her it was okay.  I put her tiny violin on my shoulder and played her song so she could remember how it was supposed to go.  As soon as she heard the notes her face lit up in recognition and she said, “Can I try it now?”  I handed over the violin and she played through her song perfectly.  Just like she’s been doing at home for weeks.  I asked her if she was ready to go back in.  She nodded, hugged me, and said, “Thanks mom.”  We quietly took our places in the audience again.

At the very end of the program Mona was ready to give her song another shot.  Her teacher invited her back on stage, and again when Mona faced the audience she froze and asked for the book.  But this time she pushed ahead.  She made a couple of false starts, but then with quiet, even tone and nicely in tune, she played her piece.  She bowed.  She looked happy.  She helped herself to many snacks at the reception.
When I think of Mona I think of her like this:

She can certainly be shy, but she’s often front and center.  She’s not usually concerned about what other people think, and although she’s flamboyant in her taste and expression, she does not seek drama.  Mona at one time was terrifyingly fearless, but she’s changed as she’s gotten older.  It’s hard to let go of old notions about people, even people you see every day who show you how they’ve evolved.  The Mona at the recital was not the front and center Mona.  She was a girl who wanted to be at the end of the line for receiving little ribbons to commemorate the event.  She wanted to blend into the background.  She was ready to take off her high heels when the performance was over. 

I’m so proud of Mona for hitting that stage again.  If she had left the hall without ever playing her piece I fear that experience could have stayed with her in a negative light for a long time to come.  Emotional events like that can be hard to shake, especially in a area like music performance.  But Mona played her piece all the way through and simply said, “Thank you” when people complimented her afterward. 

 

My little girl’s growing up, and I’m glad every day that I’m around to see it.  Best Mothers’ Day ever.  (Even if none of my stuff got done.)