What is Mother’s Day anyway? Brunch, bubbles, and blooms?
I have always had a hard time with this day, even after I became a mother. It never quite met the expectation I had of digging into what it means to mother or be mothered. And I guess I have a problem with life events that are supposed to be important and beautiful, but feel more like small talk.
I have my mother in my life and she is a great mother. But it wasn’t always that way for me. We are pretty different people. We see risk differently, we approach hard conversations differently, we seek different things from this life. I used to feel envious of people that would say they felt like their mom was their best friend, that they’d go shopping together, or go get bubbles together.
And in the last few years I realized that’s cuz she doesn’t really love small talk either (not to diminish the legitimate shopping friendships you have with your mother-folk). She just wasn’t here for that. She was here to mother me through some of the hardest years of my life. She didn’t even really know she was doing it actually. And it’s been quietly stunning.
It makes me think about mothers and mothering. We aren’t only mothered by the people who birthed us or cared for us when we were young or raised us. We aren’t only mothers if we grow human cells in our body or raise them on the outside.
Mothering is something else I can’t quite put a finger on or apply a best word to. I have the great privilege of being a mother to a gorgeous collection of cells that I grew, birthed, fed, and still raise. But he is not the only thing that makes me a mother. My ladies let me mother them. And I have been deeply and deftly mothered by them.
If today is hard, not what you imagined, or feels like small talk, start a different conversation perhaps. You have mothered. You have been mothered. Celebrate that.
