Not too long ago, Amanda reminded me of a song that I used to sing to my girls when they were young. I used to read a couple books to them and sing four or five standards right before I tucked them in for the night. On this Mothers' Day, Sunday, May 9th, 2010, my heart is full of memories of those nightime rituals and the other songs I used to sing. Silent Night, Away in a Manger, It Only Takes a Spark, You Are My Sunshine and Today.
They are the only two people in the world I can imagine would have liked my singing because they had not yet learned the meaning of "tone deaf". That was their gift to me as their mother--to love that time and be soothed by it. They grew up as a "pair" and the three of us made up our household's family--small but mighty.
They have now each added a son in law and their extended families to that fold and I am grateful to have two young gentlemen in my life who are likely to go to the ends of the earth to keep my daughters fulfilled. One of them has blessed me with a beautiful grandaughter.
I heard from both girls today, my sister, mother and the Amorosos, who invited me to dinner. Though I could not be with any of them, the the colors in my heart were pink, yellow, orange, lavender and white like the flowers that symbolize a day that cynics would say is a commercial enterprise designed to sell merchandise and cards. I have a different opinion because I know too many mothers that are the seat of strength of their families and who frankly, make every other holiday that comes through the year happen.
Nothing means more to this mother than hearing from a child she nurtured into adulthood with a better than decent outcome. It's a day of pride, remembrance, hope and wishes for many blessings to come to the adult children whose lives are well ahead of them, while living in the present moment. And it's a day of celebration for big steps for a little girl who successfully pee-peed in the potty chair today. Those "firsts" are the stuff of a mother's memories and grandmother's dreams that all will be well.
So I leave this blog with the words to one of my favorite lullabies, hoping it will soothe and bring the lyrics to precious lives.
Today
While the blossoms
Still cling
To the vine
I'll taste your strawberries
I'll drink your sweet wine
A million tomorrows
Shall all pass away,
E're I forget
All the joy
That is mine
Today.
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Ventures into virtual land
I admit I am a techno dinosaur. My laptop is slow and low on memory space. Maybe these first two lines parallel mid-life. Both of my daughters have recently married in the last two years. I am at odds with myself and contented at the same time. Is that possible? I began this blog in a technology boot camp that was our faculty retreat just days before the halls of our new building were filled with cute boots that college girls wear and the sounds of cellular equipment dinging, vibrating and rapping. Within the span of two years, I turned fifty, traveled to Africa, accepted a position as Associate Dean of a brand new School of Communication that had long roots in a small department I have been part of for eighteen years at an institution I love. I became a grandmother of a little girl, deployed thirty five students to mentor young girls, women and migrants from faraway places out of one of my classes, and traveled to two different states to stand in my role as proud mother of the bride. Alone. Their weddings were as perfect as my daughters are different. I cried unbridled tears at the ceremony where I felt like I was revisiting my former life with their father's family and loving them all, healing from an ancient divorce and regretting the unfinished business I have with the bride. The second ceremony signaled a "coming out" of shyness I had never seen in my younger daughter. I have not been successful in love, though I have loved and been loved; yet both of these beautiful young women, my daughters appear to have found their life's mates. I wish I could take credit for that, but I have no idea if any is mine and am grateful for their good judgement. My insides moved at the second wedding from fatigue, joy, a sense of completion, and overwhelming sentimentality at the simultaneous sight of watching my eldest nurse her baby, worry about a baby girl's fusses while cutting new teeth, and my youngest's embracing of her big, beautiful day that she had worked months to deploy with a budget spreadsheet, delegation of roles to aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents and her truest friends. I spent that day in two places very far away from each other--ecstasy and longing. I celebrated a beautiful couple's joy, likeness, practicality and sense of humor, watched my parents who are in their seventies dance for perhaps the first time in fifteen years. They came alive as if they had not suffered the loss of many dear friends over the past few years; they looked young and as I remember them loving each other in sweet and funny ways throughout my growing years.I felt the loss of my importance in each daughter's life as I watched my eldest fulfill her role as wife and mother, nursing her baby girl, feeling those early pangs of watching your daughter suffer, even if only from cutting new teeth. I felt like a woman cutting new teeth in suffrage and liberation at once. I was far away from my home in Chicago and close to the home of all that I knew as a child and young mother stranded between the whole of what I thought I might do with my life's future over five decades. I have failed miserably in some things and reached heights I never knew I was capable of. I finished a book manuscript over the summer that took me eleven years to write through the trials of tenure, raising teenage daughters and managing parts of my life that always seemed like bikes and ropes and water and steam that I tried to hold onto, but could never fully grasp.
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