A few days before Mother's Day my son gave me an early present, wrapped in hand-painted paper with pictures of flowers.
Inside the wrapping was a homemade white board with a dry-erase marker velcroed to it. On the board he'd written, "Happy Mother's Day! Love, Colter."
In previous years, I'd received ridiculously impractical gifts considering my parenting style: recipe holders, aprons, planters -- all accessories for conventional motherly tasks I don't enjoy, like cooking and gardening.
But this year's gifts -- designed by a working mom (his teacher) -- made me realize how much the state of motherhood in America has changed.
My son's other gift to me (via school) was a book he made called, "Hats off to Mom." The book honors the many hats a mother wears: teacher, nurse, sanitation worker, cook. It begins with pre-printed sentences like, "My mom is a teacher. She taught me to ..."
After that one, my son had written, "read and now I can read chapter books all by myself."
It reminds me that my mother taught me to read and was herself a working parent. She was in college when I was in pre-school, and then she taught elementary school while I was going through it myself. I used to go to her college classes with her, and to the teacher supply stores, and to the classrooms where she taught when my own school was closed for the day.
Like her, I am a working mother. Last week, a Newsweek magazine article captured my life completely in a cover story titled, "She works, he doesn't." I spend much of my energy focused on a job that supports my family, with less time and attention devoted directly to my husband and son.
On Mother's Day, I thought of the males who made me a mother: my father, my husband, my son.
My father and husband each functioned as single parents in different eras for different reasons, enabling the women in their lives to make independent choices. Because they were up to the challenge, their relationships with their children benefited.
My father and I shared a strong bond, and my husband and son have an amazing bond which I am grateful for, even if I sometimes feel like an outsider.
On Mother's Day, I thought of the single mothers I know, like our downstairs neighbor.
Laurel has two boys close to my son in age and temperament. We take them to school and they spend hours with us most evenings and weekends. We treat them like they are our own and then are occasionally reminded that they're not.
My husband tells me that being raised by a single parent is the most significant predictor of whether a male will end up in jail.
I think of the mothers without children, like Marguerite Kelly, whose only son Michael (a journalist) was killed in Iraq last month. She wrote, "I feel no denial. No anger. No bargaining. No depression. And this makes me wonder if I'll ever get to peace and acceptance."
"There is no right time to lose a child," she says. And now that her son is gone, is she not still a mother?
I think of the other mothers who lost sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan and places far from home. I think of other mothers without children, who lost them to drugs and various dangers, predictable and unpredictable. I think of my own mother, who lost her 4-year-old son to a fire and then 13 years later lost me, her baby girl, to a custody battle brought on by her own negligence.
On Mother's Day I thought, "Why should this day be any different?"
My son woke me with a hug, we cuddled, watched TV, and 45 minutes later he had forgotten all about me.
As soon as the phone rang and I was occupied, he was poking, prodding, and generally seeking my attention. Work beckoned, my husband started doing the dishes, and my son returned to his Game Boy.
We put so much pressure on these holidays -- official days set aside to recognize who we are for one another -- and then wait for them to live up to our artificial expectations.
And why should they? I spoke to five mothers on Mother's Day and only two of them were enjoying the day. One missed her son -- my husband -- horribly, and everyone else was occupied entirely with other matters.
There is no way I can possibly express in one day all of the gratitude I feel to the many people who have raised me and helped raise my son: my own mothers -- biological and by marriage; my sister, my sister-in-law, aunts, cousins, friends. The women who have helped teach me about my son from the time he was in day care through kindergarten and 1st grade. All of the neighbors, people at temple, total strangers whose empathy I could see in their eyes while waiting out a temper tantrum in line at the grocery store.
The day after Mother's Day, my son woke up with a fever. He was hot all over, complaining of head and body aches. My husband was getting ready to go to Boston for a few days' work. I left them together, but then was drawn back home only a few hours later, like a magnet being pulled hard toward true north.
Two days later, I am still home with my son, missing meetings and relinquishing other responsibilities so that I can help him build Power Rangers and have Pokemon battles. I am reminded that the world outside goes on without me, while the world inside is changed by my absence.
This is not Mother's Day, a day for us individually to be celebrated. It is Mothers' Day, a day for all of us, collectively, to celebrate what we have created together: our children and our lives.
This LifeFiles column originally appeared on about 70 TV station websites managed by Internet Broadcasting Systems.
Comments