Mommy, I Want You To Be Happy

"Love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark...

to have been loved so deeply...

will give us some protection forever."

J.K. Rowling

As a little girl, Mother's Day for me meant another excuse to wear the pretty new dress that had been previously showcased on Easter Sunday, but this time accessorized with a pink carnation neatly pinned on the left side, just over my heart. Going to the florist to pick up two pink flowers for me and my mom, and a white one for my grandmother was a highlight of the weekend. That, and hearing my mom say how much she loved whatever macaroni and fresh glue-glob craft I presented her with after Sunday School. It made me smile. It was a happy day.

Then I grew up.

That's not to say that Mother's Day is not still a happy day, because it is. Let's just say it's an emotionally complex day:

• The loss of my maternal grandmother gave me my first taste of the bitter-sweetness of the day. Suddenly it occurred to me what she must have felt all the years that she wore what I thought of as a pretty white flower, never really stopping to think about what it signified in her life.

• I've had a ring-side seat over the years as both my own parents and my husband's parents lost their mothers, observing grief and the myriad of ways they have individually sought a new normal without the women who brought them into the world.

• When I became a mother through adoption, I quickly learned that it is possible to feel elation and devastation simultaneously. The gift of a beautiful baby boy for me meant profound loss for his birth mom. I carry this amazing young woman in my heart every day along with the juxtaposition of emotion that will never go away.

• A little more than a week ago, the woman who has been my best friend more of my life than not gave her mother permission to step into eternity and be fully healed. Her loss is my loss because we are connected that way, and because when you grow up in a small town as we did, everyone else's parents are yours too.

• Then there is the amazing beach week I just spent with my mother. Watching her picking up shells and wading knee deep into frigid water whose pounding waves made it look like she'd been in waist deep, all for the little boy who calls her Mimi. Wishing I possessed a fraction of her patience for Play-Doh and stickers. Memorizing her face, her voice, her hands, her laugh.

The fact is, if we live long enough, Mother's Day, and every other holiday, birthday or special occasion, eventually becomes melancholy. The sin and brokenness of this world touches us via the outstretched fingers of death and relational wounds, marring days that should be filled with life and laughter. 

So, experience and wisdom have brought me to this junction, a crossroads where idealism and humanity collide. It is my purpose from here forward, on Mother's Day and every other day, to embrace both the heights of joy and the depths of grief - not just my own, but that of those around me. To feel it all. To enter into it willingly. Because One before me did the same. Not because He had no choice, but so that He could fully identify in every way with those He loved. 

"In your relationships with one another, 

have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 

Who...made himself nothing 

by taking the very nature of a servant...

And...humbled himself by becoming obedient to death --

even death on a cross!"

Philippians 2:5-8

A few weeks ago the phone rang, a Face Time call from Peru. But instead of a typical conversation with my South American family, this chat delivered a blow - one of my "fur babies" at El Jardin had passed away. Being the dog lover that I am, my heart was broken and I cried. In the moment it did not occur to me that Toby had never seen me cry like that before or that his two-year-old brain was scrambling to make sense of what was happening. I regained most of my composure and we went about our normal bedtime routine.

After several sloppy goodnight kisses he headed off to his room so his daddy could tuck him in. Seconds later, when he should have been in bed, I heard the sound of Little Man's feet on the floor. He rounded the corner in a dead run, headed straight for me, huge crocodile tears flying from his eyes. Bounding up into my lap, he threw his arms around my neck and said, "I not want you to be sad, Mommy; I want you to be happy!"

Isn't that really all any of us wants for our mommies?

(In Loving Memory of Glendel Marie Ashley.  See you soon, Tootsie! We will pick up where we left off when I get there...)

I Blinked

"For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by,

 or like a watch in the night."

Psalm 90:4

Recently my family and I took dinner to some dear friends to share a meal in celebration of the birth of their second child.  In spite of the fact that we were in the presence of a 2 1/2 year old, an 18 month old, and a 3 week old, dinner was peaceful and enjoyable (well, as much as it can be for our friends who are in the throes of the sleep deprivation, emotional and physical chaos, and adjustment that a new baby creates).  Despite the one year age gap between them, our toddlers were having a large time together, eating dinner at their own tiny table for two, then playing peacefully with only squeals of laughter alerting us to the fact that they were in the room with us.  Then it hit me.  Square in the forehead.  Right between the eyes.  My baby isn't a baby anymore.

Every mother has this moment, I think.  The realization that, at warp speed, the infant whom you firmly believed would never allow you to sleep another full night for the rest of your life has become a real person.  He doesn't need or want you to feed him anymore, or even cut up his pizza for that matter; he will eat his full slice like a big boy thank you.  He no longer has to be watched constantly while in someone else's home to make sure he doesn't touch or break things or otherwise get into something he shouldn't.  He's not attached to your leg or constantly climbing up your body out of fear or shyness or whatever it is that makes little ones cling rather than interact with others.  At some point, unbeknownst to you, he stopped being a baby and started being a little boy.  And even though you've been present for virtually every second of his life from birth to this moment, you never saw it happening, not really, until just now.

As an older first time mommy who moves in circles of other first timers who are 15-20 years my junior, I am aware that life and experience give me a slightly different perspective on the dog days of parenting.  In no way am I saying that younger mothers don't appreciate their kids or treasure many precious moments in the infant, toddler and pre-school years.  But a different level of appreciation accompanies the birth of a child to a forty-something first-time mother who had tossed in the towel ten years earlier believing parenthood wasn't a part of God's plan for her.  There has never been any doubt that I am a much different, much better parent now than I would have been in my twenties.

Unlike my twenty-something self would have been, I am determined to appreciate and embrace and commit to memory not just the happy, funny, easy moments, but the tedious, mind-numbing, pull-my-hair-out ones too.  And for the most part I do just that.  I typically start my day reminding myself to soak it all in - the great, the good, the bad, the ugly.  I'm conscious of little grins, quick hugs, and long snuggles.  I take deeper breaths and have a much calmer approach to incessant crying, temper tantrums, whining, and willful disobedience.  I get excited about back yard picnics, swimming lessons, trips to the playground, and reading 12 books at nap time.  I remind myself constantly that gibberish, toddler-speak, and a general lack of adult conversation or other intellectual stimulation is a finite phase, and all too soon I will be lamenting the loss of this stage.  A few short years ago I would have had no patience for any of this; in fact, this life that I treasure would have been pure torture for my younger self.  Now, lest I paint a false 'Ward & June Cleaver' image that anyone who knows me would balk at anyway, let me assure you I'm a typical mother too, experiencing things that are common to all of us regardless of age.  Are there days when my husband comes home only to wish he'd been asked to work late because the house looks like a tornado touched down, there's no dinner on the table (or on the stove, or in the fridge, or in the cabinet), and not only are Toby and I having massive meltdowns, but it's highly possible that the stuffed animals are crying too?  YES!  But...it's much easier for me to recover from such days, evaluate them for what they are, and even find bits of humor and snippets of future great memories in them.

My point?  Knowing myself as intimately as I do, I am acutely aware that the mommy I would have been as a 26 year old with a two year old bears no resemblance whatsoever to the mommy I am now as a 46 year old.  The younger me never would have reflected on a week that consisted of little to no sleep, maybe two showers, a thousand poopy diapers, a little person lying in the kitchen floor kicking and screaming, saying the word "no" every 30 seconds, never going to the bathroom alone, and six loads of laundry piled on the bed waiting to be moved to the floor so we can sleep and thought, "these are the moments I never ever want to forget!"  But that's what I do.

My real point?  As much as I treasure this gift of motherhood that came to me much later and very unexpectedly, and as determined as I am to burn each day into my brain, time flies.  It gets away from me even as I am intentionally willing it to stand still.  I can't stop it.  I can't freeze it. I can't slow it down.  Holding my friend's newborn, it seemed like only yesterday that my little man was so tiny.  Yet as I watched him playing with the 18 month old, creating a soundtrack of their giggles in my brain, the clock was ticking.  A wise man named Kenny Chesney once sang, "Don't blink...You just might miss your babies growing like mine did...Trust me friend a hundred years goes faster than you think, so don't blink...life goes faster than you think...don't blink."

Obviously, I blinked.