When I was younger, my mother bought a trailer on a river about 20 minutes away from our house. We'd spend a few weekends there a month. Sometimes just drive down for some quiet in the evenings. It wasn't much but, I loved that I could walk the river from one end of the road to the other all by myself, walk up into the sand dunes or visit the other 'weekenders' on the road.
There was one woman a few cottages down from us and I always enjoyed visiting her and her husband. She played this card game, golf, I think it was called and she'd always, always play with me. They also had a big dock on the river that I could tie my tube up to and just float there for as long as I wanted. I remember adding this woman's phone number to our little directory at home and I wrote "Mom" instead of her real name and apparently someone was a bit threatened and they crossed out what I had written, replacing it with this woman's name. I never really gave that much thought...
About the time I got married, maybe before I began to struggle with the words "Mom or mother". I had mine and to tell you the truth, there isn't much positive attached to it and as I got older that word came to mean less and less. More and more pain came from it. I got married and my mother-in-law (bless her heart) wanted to pull me in and become part of their family which is great and all but, for a girl with HUGE mother issues, I couldn't take on all the stigma of having another "mother" and this girl, this girl fled and fast with her hair on fire!
I always struggle with Mother's Day. Every gift was never enough, cards were always "too generic". It simply wasn't worth the effort. Add on the failures of infertility - wanting so badly to celebrate Mother's Day for yourself and it was simply a recipe for disaster. I remember our first Mother's Day - and second - both ending in total meltdown.
I'm taking back control of this Mother thing. Though I am not comfortable to call (almost) anyone "mother" or "mom" and probably never will be, and even if I may never celebrate my mother, I can celebrate some pretty fantastic women in my life! I have my sisters, my sister-in-laws, my wonderful aunts and some friends that I love and trust enough, who have been around long enough to allow me to open up in my own time.
Time to go forward. Forget the past. Pave a new way to the future. I pray that I have learned from my mother's mistakes to give my son a good mom. I pray harder for God to show me how to accept and love my daughter-in-law one day - better than my mom taught me in ahem...loving hers.
Oddly, I also went through my "to-read" book list this morning. I removed every book about being a daughter, a better daughter, some one's daughter or even had daughter in the title. I'm done looking at myself, trying to find the solution within me. I am a good person and the solution is not only mine. I was a child. I learned from the examples she set before me. I'm adult now and I know right from wrong. It's her turn to right some of these wrongs.
I'm moving on. I am going to be happy for my friends, and my cousins and those who do have terrific moms - those who are terrific moms. I want them to cherish how important it is to have a great mom - or even a good mom. I'm going to celebrate these wonderful women, with these wonderful women and just be happy, if not for me for them because it's just the right thing to do. The right way to move on.
No comments:
Post a Comment