Mother's Day

I had a beautiful and classic Mother's Day. Sunday school teachers helped the little boys make hand print crafts, I coerced Little Miss Teen into making a craft for me and I gave my Huggyband a list of ideas of things to shop (the fact that he left the list on the front seat of my van with the stuff he had bought crossed off is besides the point.) We dropped off a #1 Grandma mug at Grandmas (note to self; I think over 7 years of marriage I've given her 5 of these it must be my "go to" gift and I must remember to be more creative next year.) We took a road trip to get me my beloved Tim Horton's donuts and I didn't have to change any diapers. It was a happy Mother's Day indeed. I am blessed with 3 incredible children. Children I honestly didn't think I'd have. Since I'm an only child I thought for sure that I'd inherit my Mom's fertility problems; I didn't. I was afraid that I wouldn't know how to parent more than one child; somehow, I manage. They are the light of my life. They are what keep me going and I'll always be grateful for them.

Mother's Day is one of those fragile days; for some people it's good, for some people it's awful. Sometimes its both. Mixed emotions are common; tread lightly. It's like a flow chart; if YOUR mother is living (preferably close enough to celebrate with) and you have a great relationship or great memories of her then you're good. On this chart you get a free pass to the side that looks at YOU as a mother. But what if your mother isn't alive? What if the track you're going down is that of a loss daughter? I spent time on line yesterday with an old friend who lost her Mom in March. She was a great lady. Wise and talented.... She is missed. I spent time thinking about the family of the patient I lost last week as they met up with their first Mother's Day without her. I also spent time thinking about a few of my current patients families as they faced the reality that this would be their last Mother's Day with their Moms. My heart went out to them.

Obviously I identify with the daughters who have lost Moms. When Hope Edelman writes in her book "Motherless Daughters" that when her Mom died she "wanted to destroy every Hallmark Mother's Day card display" she saw; I say a big Amen. I've been there. Wishing I could just stay in bed and make the whole day go away. Wishing there was some way to teleport myself through certain months. I also remember purposely picking a fight with a young man on Mother's Day because he had in effect ran away from home. Cut his mother out of his life....... That was the first Mother's Day 2 little girls in my life had without their Mom and they didn't have a choice in it. I was angry, I was grieving and I let this young man know it in a very ungracious way.

The second side of the fictional flow chart is if you yourself are a Mom. I have been blessed with fertility and for that I am thankful. But we have friends who haven't. We have friends who are childless by choice and we have friends who feel that God simply hasn't called them to have children. Those friends are in the minority, because we have a lot of friends who want children but can't have them. Today there are 6.1 million woman in America with infertility problems. I can't begin to imagine how awful that must be. My husband can though. It took him and his late wife 12 years to conceive our Little Miss Teen. Yes, she was worth the wait, but it's not a wait he'd wish on anybody.

And then there is road number 3; loss Moms. It doesn't matter how old your child is when he or she passes the fact is that you're still a Mom and that child was still your child. 25% of American woman experience a miscarriage (a person's a person no matter how small) and 1 pregnancy in 80 results in a stillbirth. No; the euphemism "born sleeping" does not help me on that one. We lost baby Jonathan the week before Mother's Day 5 years ago. Talk about months you wish you could fast forward through.... I have a friend who lost a baby that was conceived in violence. She's still a Mom; she would have been a great, great Mom. I honor her. I wonder what Mother's Day feels like for her? I have a friend who's adopted daughter died within a week of her birth; yesterday was painful to her as well. She should have been receiving her first hand print card not grieving. And yesterday was my second Mom's (I have yet to find a way to distinguish my 2 mothers in writing so bear with me; she knows who she is!) without her son. I cried for her. I cried for him. Oh heck I cried for us all. Loss is unfair. Not being able to have kids is unfair. Loss is unfair... Children are fun. Motherhood is hard work.