Yeah another line from a country song here. A good one, yup. It Don’t Hurt Like It Used To, Billy Currington.
This song, its feelings and lyrics, has been hanging out in my periphery as I approached and then backed off writing the past week plus. It’s about a lost romance, of course. For me, it evokes some other stuff. But whatever I had to say, first I had to get through…duh duh duh… Mother’s Day. Or shall we say, the M day.
Jesus, what a day, all around saccharine and landmine-laced for those who’ve lost their mothers, and for the women who wanted children but couldn’t, or decided not to have them, and for those who had them but lost them. Including the pretty small minority who like me were abandoned by them.
It don’t hurt like it used to. Except when it does, when it comes up from behind and flattens you, winds you completely. Or when you feel like it has sucked a significant piece of your soul away. Remember the dementors in Harry Potter? Sort of like that.
What? I would have barked had you told me ten years ago this is where we’d be. No. Effing. Way.
Hey, hey,
What can I say?
I can just lie and say it’s all ok
For so many years, as a parent you fear The Call. Late night, mid-afternoon, early morning, it can come anytime. There’s been an accident. So sorry. As a parent you are always, never prepared for it. My call came one evening in May a few years back, from my son in Chicago. He delivered the news himself. Damned if I can recall what he said, but I recall what I felt, I can feel the edge of it still, the gut wrenching nausea as he pretty much tore my heart off most all the bearings it had.
The week or so leading up to M day this year, there were moments of grace. Like others I’ve written about here– a stranger, acquaintance, human, animal, steps up and blasts away the dementors, picks you up from the ground where you lay windless. Sometimes you have no idea how bad it had gotten til they come and lift you up. Pretty much always they come from the most unexpected quarters.
M day -3, in line at JoAnn’s Fabric Store, a place that always leaves me feeling inept and quite one dimensional given the array of crafts I am clueless about. I go there to buy the hemp thread that I use for the les collines hangtags. I’m late, what’s new, but late to an appointment with my attorney, as there has been an, ah, situation with the house I live in. A little stressful. So I’m in line, behind a woman who has a cartful. Patience, grasshopper. I am soothing myself by scrolling through my phone to find a JoAnn’s coupon, of which I seem to receive like 100 a week (rub it in about my ineptitude, go ahead!) but they have always expired when I go to buy my hemp. I keep meaning to order it online in bulk but this is one detail that keeps eluding me.
The woman ahead of me turns around and says, you can go ahead of me, I have a bunch of returns and it’ll take awhile. Oh, really? thank you! that’s very kind. I get up to the register and pay for my skein, and as I go to leave I turn to the woman, who’s propped on her cart waiting, and say thank you again. Her face brightens, and she says “Happy Mother’s Day!” Just like that. I nearly burst into tears, but I say, Oh, thank you! same to you! This, so completely made my day.
Because a portion of the horror and the sorrow for me is the being stripped, seemingly, of my status, not quite the right word, my personhood so to speak, as a mother. How can I be a mother when I no longer have a functioning child? When my child has turned away from me? What does that make our shared seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, holidays, sicknesses, sorrows, jokes, vacations, successes, failures? Well, this is a path I don’t venture down too much as there lies the road to ruin, to utter breakdown, to insanity. But since we’re on the topic.
The woman took a chance that I was a mother– probably the hemp offered no clue, but I guess women of a certain age, what is the likelihood they have kids? Better than 50%? Perhaps it was the sorrow behind my eyes. But her words were like the brush of an angel’s wing, you’re not alone, you’re not forgotten, there’s something bigger and better beyond the misery on the ground. More, that you deserve– that’s not quite the word but for lack of another– to be recognized as a mother. You are a mother. Whatever your child is doing, it does not negate all those years, all the literal blood, sweat, and tears.
A few days later I stop at a farm store, a little out of my way and open only on weekends so I don’t often get there. It’s run by a couple, I’m guessing 15 or so years younger than me, and today the wife is there. They have awesome meat and eggs, and I was getting a dozen and a roaster.
It’s Saturday now, -1. The woman gets the door for me as I leave balancing my eggs and chicken, we’re laughing at my dogs in the car, beside themselves at the chickens swarming, doing that chicken thing, high bob-stepping, just. so close. But not too close, then they bob-step away. Happy Mother’s Day, she says, and again, I choke back the tsunami that feels like it is coming up from a well I usually keep bolted shut. But it is so ridiculously nice to hear this. Thank you, same to you! Does she have children? No matter.
At some point as a mother, if you’re real, it’s inevitable your heart will be broken by your children. Hopefully not ground to a pulp, what mine feels like, but still. And then, you join the tribe, and become really real. Kind of like the Velveteen Rabbit.
M day, the best tack to take seems the sleep tack. Just keep sleeping, maybe you’ll wake up and it’ll be over. Of course given my normal I’m awake at 5, 6, and on, but I manage to fall back asleep pretty well up through about 10. Patient dogs and I are all there, hanging out in bed, it feels like a boat, the four-poster floating high up in the house, great view west. And now it’s close to 11:30, crazy late. A friend, a mother, calls to check in, happy M day. Let me tell you, they are few and far between, friends who stand by you, don’t judge you, honor who you are. Whatever that may be, including unwillingly lapsed mother. I tell her the shocking news, I am still horizontal, but now I have to get up at least for the dogs. I make my morning now afternoon tea as we talk, let the dogs out into the gorgeous just-cleared-out-after-a week-of-rain day.
We talk til one, she is driving home from visiting her mother a few hours south. I miss my mother. 1 pm, eleven more hours. Managed to miss all the morning news shows with segments on what to do for mom, special stories about mom, newscasters’ good wishes to their moms and their wives and all the moms… It turns out I was invited to friends for dinner, which I hadn’t realized but welcome. Scudding clouds, sun, we go walking up in back and soon it is time to go for dinner.
No mention there made of M day. It feels odd, but it’s a relief, like this silly day has not alien-like taken over the general population. Forget that BS. We eat and drink and watch the sun set over the Catskills. Our two younger intact males, unattended for a bit too long by their humans, go at each other so much that theirs ends up having an erection that won’t quit, it is hilarious although merits a call to the vet. He is horribly sore but otherwise ok.
I hit home just in time for The Good Wife, season finale. Love that show. Tough ending. Good watch for M day. Now it’s barely ten hours up, but it seems just about time to call it a day. Wake up in a few hours and it will be M day +1.
And that, is how I survived M day 2016. Next year, maybe I’ll try to go away, perhaps to a time zone far, far away. Or perhaps, like the song says, Checkin’ that calendar, X’in days off, by next year it really won’t hurt quite so much, and the stealth emotional sinkholes will be just a few fewer and further between. Hey.