Who’s Your Mama?

My mother once admitted that tulips were her favorite flower. I never asked why.

Can any child appreciate the care given by the many women in their life? I know I didn’t. Too late now to reach out to the women of my past, I recall Dorothy and Aimee and Betty and many others fondly. I reminisce, regretting relationships severed as I carelessly and gleefully discarded the burden of my hometown upbringing, unaware that their love was the reason I had the strength and means to leave.

My mother was, of course, the first maternal in my life. Memories of her, gone ten years this month, haunt me more often as I age. Physically and eternally distanced from her critical guidance, I am free to look out from her eyes and nurture respect for her as a mother. Such space allows me to acknowledge and forgive my own parenting errors. As my children continue to tear free from perceived parental bonds, frequently and, I hope, unintentionally, causing pain, I claim that pain as absolution from the sin of inflicting that same pain on my parents.

As my children flew the coop, their friends followed, leaving an emotional void, the house empty and sterile once children and teens closed the proverbial door for the last time. I no longer spent energy tracking down the owner of the forgotten sweatshirt, the abandoned case of poker chips, the discarded sunglasses, or wondering who brought the beer or left a hole in the wall. (I Don’t-Know was invariably the guilty party. Uttering the name brought a gleam of awe, or guilt, to the speaker’s eyes.) The distinctive, pungent odor of adolescent boy was gone. And I missed it.

Children growing up have enough to process without bearing the burdens of the adults entrusted with their care. I don’t expect my children’s friends to understand what their presence in my life meant to me. I appreciate the few who stay in touch. I appreciate the few who honored my mother during her life with affectionate greetings and hugs. My children’s friends were my children. I know their mothers felt the same way.

Most of those young people are now parents themselves. I imagine a flash of insight when their children leave home. I see them in their sterile homes, remembering Mary and Sally and Terri and Sharon. They will know how much we loved them.

**** I ended the essay and abhor patronizing admonitions, BUT, for the sake of maternal hearts everywhere, I must add this: If it is not too late, reach out to those other mothers. You still have a place in their hearts.