I Cried While Writing This
on learning to mother myself.
A quick heads-up: Today’s essay touches on grief and (U.S.) Mother’s Day. If you have complicated feelings around this time (me too), I wrote it with you in mind. But if you’d rather avoid the whole topic, you can safely skip ahead to the weekly card, or tune in next week. Thank you for reading.
Over the last eight weeks (they start early!) I have received no fewer than 437 emails peddling flowers and jewelry and pajamas and books and custom framing and ceramics and “bundles” of various kinds. This figure does not include dozens of targeted ads and assorted gift guides.
Of this avalanche, only two brands asked if I’d prefer to opt out of Mother’s Day promos. Exactly zero asked if I’d like to opt out of email marketing, late-stage capitalism, or the month of May. (All yes, as it were.)
“THERE’S STILL TIME,” shouted one unfortunately worded subject line, “TO SHOW MOM YOU CARE.”
There isn’t, actually.
As a motherless daughter with no children of my own, this day is not for me. Yet the feelings it stirs up aren’t fully of me, either. I don’t begrudge mothers a measly brunch in the face of a system that doesn’t support them. I don’t begrudge anyone the space to celebrate their life choices — in any shape, form, or direction — however they wish.
What I bump on is the question of performing instead of relating. Time after time, we put the sell in celebration, without addressing what’s really at play. Our calendars grow ever packed with National Days and Weeks and Months, as our world is desperately in need of care.
There’s still a week to go. I shudder to think what may come.
*
People get prickly around the topic of motherhood, and for good reason. We cram so much into those three letters — a name, a job, an identity, wrapped in hopes and dreams, pressure and expectations. And because we are human, inevitable heartbreak, too.
So before we go further, this is not (exactly) a piece about mothers. This is about mothering — a verb, and a universal one at that.
*
There is an episode of Sex and the City titled “My Motherboard, My Self.” (If you’re familiar with the series, I feel you nodding in recognition.) It has the distinction of being the only episode I have viewed once in its entirety, despite re-watching the show some 37,642 times over the years, to the point of memorization.
The mere thought of this episode destroys me.
Amidst the usual flurry of dating and relating, Miranda’s mother unexpectedly dies. At the funeral, Miranda walks alone down the church aisle trailing her mom’s coffin, until Carrie rushes to walk beside her. It is mothering at its finest.
I suspect that as I watched this scene — seated next to my then-roommates who I count among my greatest loves, my own mother somewhere across the Hudson, a distance that was no rival for the chasm between her dreams and mine — I encountered a truth so raw, so essential, that it burned me to touch it.
Mothering is everywhere. Even when it’s not.
Only now, seated in another chapter, do I find this comforting.
*
My mother died five months ago. Grief comes with its own agenda, its own bouquet of surprises. But one positive is the mothering I have found in unexpected places.