To My Mom on Mother's Day

Sure do wish I could pick up the phone and hear your “trying-go-get-ready-for-church” voice: giving me all the remaining attention as you effortlessly printed out the song list, typed Dad’s sermon notes, ironed his shirt, pulled on your black skirt, and struggled one more time to make your curly hair straight. 

I wish we could laugh for a bit about how anticlimactic Mother’s Day is, “such an ordeal its become, you’d say”, or that we could lament over the fact that we didn’t live closer so you could see my kiddos when they pitter patter around in their jammies.  

I wish we could have coffee together, over the phone even, and talk about the flowers in your back porch pots that were waking up from a night’s sleep. You never quite got the hydrangea growing just right, but my oh my, your hens and chicks spread like a disease!  “The other day Jude picked off my inpatients petals one by one”, I would tell you. And you would remind me that I did the same thing as I dawdled around on the phone in junior high. Difference is I was a teenager and should have known better. But you never scolded me about it, so I didn’t realize the travesty until I had a pot of inpatients of my own.

I wish I could tell you that I looked down this week and found breastmilk on my toe. “What?! How does that happen?”, you would laugh. “It happens to me,” I’d explain. “The result of chasing a two year old through the house while I nurse, I suppose.”

I wish we could end the conversation with something easy like “See you in a little bit” or “Talk to you later”, words I took for granted until they suddenly and drastically became “Good bye”. 

“See you on the flip side,” just doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it, Mama?

On my worst days, I miss your voice so desperately that I’m afraid the memory of it is losing the right pitch and dialect. Like somehow, I’m going to morph it into a mix of Paula Deen and Fran Driescher and never remember exactly how it sounded when you told me how much you loved me. 

On my worst days I lament over the fact that when I had the opportunity to tell everyone how amazing you were at your funeral, I told them that you could make a mean grilled cheese. Mom, you were much more than your grilled cheese sandwich!

On my worst days, the fear of losing the scent can be paralyzing. I sometimes walk through stores with my nose in tubs and bottles and sprays just hoping to launch my visceral recall. I don’t remember as much how you smelled as an adult, but I keep a tub of the St. Ives cold cream you wore when I was little.

And on my worst days, I want to throw it.

On my worst days, I get grumpy and fleshy and mope around feeling sorry for myself. Because here I am, struggling with motherhood, and wrestling with the fact that my own mom will never hold my babies. 

I get mad because I can’t ask you what it was like for you when I was two and I just began those fit-throwing, into-everything, so-sweet-so-rotten stages.

The only reference point I have is cute little stories, like the fact that when I was four I said “I want to do mine own fing.”

But I don’t want the cute little stories. I want to know that there were moments you felt like getting in the car and driving until the sun set. I want to know if the sleep deprivation wore on you like militant torture. I want to know if you ever carried the guilt that seems to be a universal symptom of motherhood, or if you didn’t...how you dodged it. How you overcame.

Those are my worst days.

But on my best days, I see you everywhere I turn. I hear my voice on a video I’ve taken of the boys, and it reminds me of you. 

I dance with Jude in the living room and he does a wiggle that looks exactly like yours! 

Oliver looks over my shoulder and I’m halfway convinced he sees you in angel form, looming over our everyday stuff.

On my best days, I want to call and tell you about the meal I made, and how I’m feeling my way much more naturally through the kitchen, instinctively almost. It makes me happy to feed a family and nourish little bodies and make my husband’s belly full.

I want to send you pictures and show you how much the boys have grown and tell you how sweet their interactions are at this stage. It’s like we’re four months in and Jude is just now realizing that Oliver isn’t going anywhere. 

They’re both such lovers...hugs and kisses and cuddles all the way around. I’m proud of that too.

The Scripture refers to “the cloud of witnesses” that are watching from above and cheering us on. I’m sure it’s referring to cheering us onto the ultimate finish line, completing our life with a strong faith and unwavering integrity. 

But I have to believe that you’re on that cheer squad, encouraging me in all the practical stuff too. 

“It’s ok, Jody. Just 4,213 more diapers to go...you got this.”

“This, too, is a phase, precious. Just laugh it off.”

“Way to go, Jody! You’ve made it through another day!”

I think you’d tell me I’m a good mom. And ultimately, that’s all any mom wants to hear. 

And Mama, YOU were a good mom...a great mom...and it seemed so effortless that I don’t know that I ever properly thanked you. 

It’s like, since I didn’t know you as Tammy BK (before kids) I was never aware of the sacrifices and adjustments you made to accommodate your life as a mother. I hope we didn’t throw things off for you too bad. I know you looked at me and Jordan as your greatest accomplishments, but I hope  you knew we weren’t your only ones.

Mother’s Day kind of sucks for a lot of people. It sucks for the people with dead moms, or the devastated mothers that have had to bury their child. It sucks for women that aren’t moms yet, as if somehow their full value can’t be appraised until they’ve given birth. It’s a highly commercialized holiday where florists and card shops prey on our tender emotions, feast on our buried and unspoken sentiments.

But on this Mother’s Day, now that I’m a cup-runneth-over (or more accurately, a cup-spilling-over) mom of two, I want to let you know how much I appreciate all the deposits you made into me as I was growing into the woman I am today.

You grew me in the small places of your womb and delivered me into the world. You tenderly cared for my overly sensitive heart, and held me even as an adult when I felt shattered. You taught me how to love with courage and how to honor others with my choices and time. You let me out grow the picky eater stuff on my own time frame, and tolerated the absolutely hideous thrift-store style I was trying to forge in high school. You made me believe that I was smart and beautiful and creative, and with you in my stands, I knew that I could do absolutely anything. Thank you for all of that.

Because now I’m a mom to tender hearted little boys. I’m having to navigate my way through the kind of discipline it takes to raise respectable men. I’m trying to raise warriors, mighty men that do great things in this big ol’ world, and I couldn’t do what I do, day in and day out, if it weren’t for the kind of mother that you were to me.

So thank you.

And by the way, I can make a mean grilled cheese too.