Are You My Mother?

An illustrated essay in anticipation of Mother's Day

In the dream, I’m at a Very Important Event, trapped in the hotel room shower without the right clothes to put on after I get out. My mom is there but she’s brought the wrong clothes, and I’m annoyed. My kids are nearby but I don’t exactly know where, I wish she’d find them. The stress is causing a tightness in my chest, and I’m wet and cold.

I wake up and the tightness wells up into my face, liquifying into hot tears that soak into my pillow after I come to and realize what I’ve done: squandered the golden opportunity of her coming to me in a dream, which has happened so rarely in the four years, six months and twenty-two days since she died. I pull the quilt she made us as a wedding gift up over my shoulders and hold my breath: I could have hugged her. I could have asked her one of the seven thousand questions I’ve had to swallow whole since the last time I talked to her. She could have seen Lucas at six (he was 18 months old when she died) and met three-year-old Charlie. She could have played with them, listened to Lu try to tell a joke (he’s in that funny in-between phase where he understands that jokes exist but not exactly how they work) and heard Charlie’s signature maniacal cackle that has been his trademark since before he could sit up.

After a while, I walk downstairs and my husband sees me and rushes over with a face full of concern, thinking I’ve had a phone call or message with more bad news. His “oh, just a dream” feels like a betrayal, even though it isn’t. The tears leave a sour taste in my mouth that stays with me for days.

Mother’s Day is approaching again. I make my living selling greeting cards, so it is impossible for me to ignore it. I know that I’m not the only one who dreads this holiday; more than half of people in the US will lose a parent before the age of 50 (Emily Oster). This September it will be five years since my mom died, so that makes this my fourth time through this wretched phase in the editorial calendar. Every year it is awful in a fresh new way. Blessedly, we have an excellent new marketing manager who is doing the lion’s share of mother’s day-related emailing and blog posting and product round-ups this season. But still, it looms.

I’m lying on the black pleather exam table in my physical therapist’s office wearing running shorts I may never run in again. As she scrunches the skin over my knee in order to tape my shifty 42-year old kneecap into place and keep it from deviating from its designated path as it rotates over my femur, we dig deep into the topic of toddler bedtime shenanigans. I find myself asking for her advice, prodding her to analyze the difference between each of her children and grandchildren at my son’s age. I crave the wisdom of the older generation, the women who have completed their bedtime duties and lived to tell about it. We hug as I leave, and I realize that she has offered me a little taste of the mothering I’ve been craving.

When my mother died I think I assumed that it would somehow get easier to live without her. But, in fact, it gets harder. The further away I travel from the part of my life when I had access to her support and companionship and wisdom, the more adrift I feel. I lose her afresh at every new stage in my kids’ development, every new advancement or challenge in my career. Each birthday brings a new year when I don’t get to ask her questions about when she was 40, 41, 42. What her body felt like, what she cared about, what got easier and what got harder as she got older. 

So I find myself seeking out women around my mother’s age to glom myself onto in more or less appropriate contexts. I like to bum a little mothering wherever I can, like a former smoker who no longer carries her own pack but still likes a puff or two during her period. Some of these women are obvious targets, like my mother-in-law or my husband’s aunt. But others are just innocent passers-by who have no idea they are about to step for a moment into my mother’s practical brown Birkenstocks (which she paired with nude stockings and wore with long skirts or slacks under her lab coat like a boss). 

My husband and I give each other one night off each week from the aforementioned bedtime circus. One of my favorite ways to pass my precious child-free Wednesday evenings is to visit the wife of the husband-and-wife team who run the local printshop in our small town. I bring my thumb drive with proofs of packaging designs I’m working on or swatches of patterns I want to test and she ushers me up the stairs to her workspace in the loft above the main floor. 

We settle in among the stacks of flyers and menus and holiday cards she’s creating for other people and in between questions about file formats and paper stocks, she generously mothers me a little bit too. We talk about the schools in town, about what it's like to live in a female body as it ages, about where to get the best croissants. She sends me home with extra empty cardboard tubes for my kids’ craft projects and gives me her cell number, in case I need anything. 

Preparing to leave for our family spring break trip to Arizona, I have not one but TWO separate packing spreadsheets printed out and clipped efficiently to a clipboard (I am my mother’s daughter after all) but I still manage to forget the stroller, Charlie’s shoes AND his jacket. But for the first time since we had our first kid, we are actually able to physically carry everything we’ve brought with us and the flight is smoother than any we’ve taken as a family of four. 

All is well until we start our descent into the Tucson airport. My insides start to roil as the flight attendants make announcements about the weather and caution us to remain in our seats until they open the doors. I mistake my sour stomach and the hammering in my chest for vexation at the antics of my wiggly 3- and 6-year old boys who have been confined in car seats and economy rows all day and are now slamming their bony little body parts into my ribs and shins at every opportunity. But as we step off the moving walkway and approach the rental car counter, there's a terrible moment of recognition. I’m transported mind and soul right back to the day my aunt picked us up at this very spot and drove us to the hospital where my mom was awaiting transfer to hospice.

Suddenly, Charlie takes off running out the sliding doors and out of sight. My limbs, heavy and tingling after having been left behind by my time-warping mind are suddenly on fire with a blast of maternal adrenaline. I chase him, yelling, right up to the first painted white line on the crosswalk of a busy road. He does stop, but I wasn’t sure he would, and my sadness and fear take full possession of my hands as I grip his shoulders too tightly and make my voice as scary as it can possibly be as I repeat over and over, NO NO NO. Finally, in the rental car, I have to implore my tired, patient husband to pull over at a playground before we drive the last ten minutes to our destination so I can breathe and get myself together.

I have the brilliant idea to ask my aunt Nancy (my mom’s sister) if Charlie and I can sleep at her house while my husband and older son Lucas stay with my dad while we’re in Arizona. Charlie always ends up in my bed these days, and I know none of us will sleep well if we all try to pile into the guest room at Dad’s. And also: his house used to be my mom's house. She was living there when she died, it is where her art and photos and dishes still are. It's where her ashes are. I love spending time there with my dad and his new partner (whom I love) but my mom's absence fills those rooms like the fragrance from an oversized scented candle and I knew that for this visit I was going to need somewhere else to rest. 

At Nancy’s, under one of the uber-cozy fleece quilts she has been sewing since before she escaped sub-zero Minneapolis, Charlie happily falls asleep after vacation days filled with swimming and sun and devoid of naps. After he's softly snoring, I creep out and climb into Nancy’s bed, another cloud of fleece in her favorite purples. 

We talk and talk, in a way we haven’t since my mom used to send me as a tween to Minneapolis for the weekend to do my clothes shopping and get manicures and do all the girly, crafty things she found exasperating. Nancy is an artist who works with glass and ceramics and fabric. She weaves baskets and has a magnificent garden, which Charlie helps her thoroughly water each morning we are there. She’s a mother of three and Nana to eight, grand-Nana to two. She knew my mom better than anyone; she was the one who was in the room at her bedside in the dark hours of that early Saturday morning when Mom took her last breath. Nancy gave my mom the gift of allowing her to feel it was ok to finally let go. And she’s loved me since before I was born. Being in her bed with my head on her shoulder is the closest I’ve come to the feeling I crave: being held, being seen, being gently guided by my mom. It is more than that; a chance to reflect on who my mom was, to see things from a perspective that is refreshingly different than hers was. Less judgemental, less inclined to see my choices, achievements or mistakes as a reflection of her. And it's a chance to really get to know in a new way this thoughtful, interesting, creative woman who has been caring deeply for me for my entire life.

In the morning, Nancy and Charlie agree to bake muffins together. It fills my heart up to the point where I’m not sure I’ll ever need to breathe in again to watch my beloved aunt put her arms around my boy and help him scoop flour, level off the top with a butter knife and let him energetically dump it into a mixing bowl. Lucas and I sit at the counter and draw flowers and race cars with Nancy’s glorious stash of colored pencils, and when they are ready Charlie proudly presents us with the fruits of their labor. Putting my first bite of the warm, spiced crumbs on my tongue feels like taking communion: I feel my mom with us as the desert sends a cool, dry exhale of dust and sage through the open screen door.

In the heart-wrenching meditation Notes on Grief that she wrote after losing her father, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says “For the rest of my life, I will live with my hands outstretched for things that are no longer there.” I know that I'll continue to reach for my mother for all my days, as she did for hers after Grammie died when I was in college. But while I'm groping around in her absence, I'm finding that there are remarkable connections to be made with people I may not have been as open to if she'd lived longer. 

Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a botanist and biochemist who became an orphan at the age of 11. Her mother’s family was part of one of the last Celtic communities in Ireland to live by Brehon law, which said that if a child lost her parents, she became everyone’s child and everyone’s responsibility. I'm lucky to have had my mom for a lot longer than Diana had hers, but reading about her wardship in her book To Speak for the Trees, in which older people in the community visited her or called her to them in order to impart some bit of knowledge about plants or cooking or child rearing, I realized I've also been lucky in the unexpected relationships that have blossomed since my mom vacated her position as the fount of female wisdom and support in my life.

So this Mother's Day, I'm missing my mom, but I’m also celebrating my mother figures, whether they know themselves in that way or not. Mine include our elderly neighbor who shares with me from her stash of quilting fabric and canning jars, the lady I sit next to in my singing group whom I rely on to help me hold onto the alto line and recommend thoughtful books to read, and my son’s daycare provider who has patiently and kindly nurtured both my threenager and I through a trying season of meltdowns and six-hour bedtime battles. As a mother, one expects to get a Mother's Day card. But how lovely would it be to receive the message that without even knowing you were doing it, you've helped at least partly to mend a broken heart and offer a little parenting to one of the many people whose arms remain outstretched, reaching for the unreachable?

This week’s gift for paid subscribers is an illustrated recipe for the Pumpkin-Cranberry Muffins Nancy and Charlie made together.