Teenagers, mother’s day and sandwiches
Cherry blossoms in Philly
Well, here we are again all. I’m on the brink of another Mother’s Day. And my mom is still very very gone. This Mother’s Day is weird. I feel my role changing as a mom. My oldest son needs me less. He seeks friends for council where his mom used to be. This pulling away... totally normal and healthy… but oh so hard for me to adjust to. This year has been hard and heavily full of logistics for my husband and I. Not like the years when I was losing Mom and Dad. That was different hard for me. But this year has stretched me and demanded so much of my time. I had to pull away from my kids, just in the moment when one of them also needed more independence. Should be the perfect fit, right? Yet as my oldest has started to need me less, I’m wanting to hear from him more. What choices is he making? And your friends? What are they doing and saying and thinking so I can gauge how many lectures you should receive. Have I given you enough hugs?
Still likes to happy, bouncy walk with his Mama with an arm full of veggie dumplings.
I remember pushing my mom away at about this time also. I told her I didn’t want to get confirmed into the Catholic religion and be “forced to be a part of her religion” when I was about 13. I took the thing that she held sacred and just shoved it off of me, trying to differentiate and establish myself as an independent thinker and believer. Which, ironically, is what she wanted me to be. I did it when I picked careers as well. I pushed for something different- certainly not what she was doing. Went into the highly lucrative social work field. But here I am at 46, changing careers and in my last month of school to become a teacher, just like my mom.
Mom would have loved to do this with me. This was a total waste of time. And she would have laughed, told me not to throw it out and then helped me make it into a fun game.
I pushed her away when I was a teenager, which I guess you can say is part of growing up. But that’s not the only time. When Mom got sick with dementia, there was an ugly part of me that really wanted distance from her as well. Because it was absolutely horrible to watch day by day. A part of me was so embarrased by her sickness that I needed to show all the ways that I wasn’t like her- that it wasn’t contagious or that it wasn’t a matter of our family not being smart or capable. The person I knew became unrecognizable to me- just as I had become to her. It almost feels like there were two moms- the one before she got sick and then the other, different/broken version of her. A version that hated wine, loved Ginger ale and ate with her hands when it was time for forks. It’s hard to remember her being healthy because I have to bypass the 7 years of sick mom to arrive at my original, not Alzheimer’s mom. That one didn’t just remember me. She knew my heart. This is why it crushed me so much when she forgot me and I think a part of me felt like she just wasn’t trying to remember me. But sitting here looking at my kids swim lap after lap at swim practice, I know that she must have fought so much to try and keep me. She must have tried with all of her might to try to remember my heart. When she was deeply sick, I wanted to separate from her and we gave almost all of her things away. I gave away her clothes that she had stained with accidents of food and so much worse. She lost her jewelry piece by piece. We sold the house and the car and the couch. But despite having so few actual items that tie me to Mom, I carry her with me always and I miss her. And despite her being gone for so long, and because I am a mom and I know how mom’s brains work, I know she has missed me every day. That I know for sure.
