Life and Landscaping

So I am fresh off of Memorial Day weekend, gut filled with laughter and maybe 2 Sangrias more than I should have ingested. But a good time nonetheless.

My guests (my in-laws!) were a blast to have over, mostly b/c we know each other and don't try to entertain or woo each other anymore. My father-in-law is still a closet democrat and I am an ignorant republican and anything we can't settle in debate (none) we just settle with laughter and vino. It's our love language.

But as my guests leave I realize that it feels like Monday but in actuality it is Tuesday. This befuddles me. I feel behind already, like I lost a day.

And all day I felt that way, slightly unmoored and definitely not improved by the dietary choices of the weekend. Junk food and burgers, if you must know. Fuzzy brained.

When my mother and father-in-law drove off, I held my baby girl as she wept. She sited that she wanted to be with her grandparents and that they belong here, not in Iowa and not in Wisconsin. Noted.

I took her for a walk so she would stop talking about watching movies. It was hardly exercise, but involved listening to her jabber nonstop about NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, jumping from one topic to the next like a jackrabbit as it jumps in zig-zag patterns.

And then we came home and waited for a contractor. Can we all just agree that waiting for people to fix things in your house is like waiting for a woman to go into labor? Just busy yourself with other chores and they will come, I swear. A watched pot never boils.

That, followed by trying to locate two new backup batteries for our sump pump. Our backup waited to screech its caw of death "Low battery! Low battery!" while our guests were nestling in their beds. Despite websites and toll free numbers plastered on the battery telling one where to purchase new ones, no help could be found. I almost began to wave money in the air yelling, "I have dollars! Please! I buy batteries from you." But salespeople for battery stores pick up the phone reluctantly hoping you won't ask them any questions as they continue playing vintage Atari on the company's clock. Go ahead, fight me on this. I dare you.

By the time noon rolled around, I had eaten two cookies, hardly any breakfast and fed Eve at least seven meals. Her boredom causes her to ask for food; this could prove a problem in the future, but for now she is only growing vertically.

So in my angst (Darn battery people. Crazy Tuesday.) I took the hedge trimmers from the garage and began pruning the bushes. The thing about hedge trimmers that one must remember is that they are an editing tool but they do not "unedit" whatever you remove. My newly pruned bushes resemble a little girl on picture day when her mother cut her bangs "real quick" before sending her off to school.

Upon trimming the boxwoods, I realized that one particular brown-looking one was not about to resurrect anytime soon, so I took to gingerly snipping off the bad branches and– for fun– attempted to dig out the root ball. There's no formula to digging out a structure which has spent its entire life entwining itself around earth, but I will say that if you can think of something maddening, you can use a lot more force when you plunge your shovel into its entrails.

By the time Morgan returned home from school she found a mother figure who was laying in bed, partly paralyzed by exhaustion and partly laid up due to dehydration. Eve was chirping around me, claiming that she needed to run down the street to visit a friend since she saw that I was unable to fight her. Children have antenna for when their parents are downtrodden.

I made dinner, realizing that I had forgotten to take Eve to her last Tuesday gymnastics class. It's Tuesday, not Monday, but all day my body said it was Monday. I sat down a bit and Morgan hit my thighs, asking me why they jiggled more than hers. I reminded her that my body gave her life and that maybe she should respect it. She smiled.

It was a day. I didn't conquer the world. But I'm still kicking.
Everything is going to be okay.

A People All Her Own

My Mom was in her early twenties when she married. She was nearly finished with college when her mother became ill; she spent her last semester tending to her mother instead of receiving her degree.

Life happened quickly. Mom became married and three months later she became sick as well. Only the sickness was simply a surge in hormones; Mom was pregnant.

Some women become mothers slowly and steadily. They marry and ease into the idea of pregnancy when their best friend has a baby. Lo and behold, they become pregnant, too.

Some women pine for children because their womb is uncooperative.

Eventually all women who long to become mothers find an outlet for motherhood, though sometimes it takes the form of mentoring or fertility drugs or adoption. Ironically, I have seen some single women with no children of their own who mother with far more heart than those married. Motherhood isn't so much a station in life as a place in the heart, a way of the mind.

My mother was thrown into motherhood quite quickly. She didn't even know she was pregnant until her constant sickness alerted her husband to the fact; he suggested she take a pregnancy test.

The thing about motherhood is that it is not a title which is earned over time. Generally speaking, it is immediate. One day you are an individual and the next day you are now the chief expert of a human being whom you have just met. It's a very shocking experience.

My mother grew up in the generation where you raised your own children. Once your children were out of the house, you could retire as a parent. She had a very tender hearted grandmother, Margaret Bready, who showed her how to nurture, but when she died, she had only the memories of that sweet woman to light her path for life.

I don't remember any one grand thing about my mother, but I remember a thousand meals, a safe home, constant guidance and loving arms when I needed them. I can't say that my mother developed a legislative initiative to cure world hunger, but for her tribe she taught that the kitchen should always be warm, that food should be respected and that all are welcome to the table. And all are welcome to chores as well. :)

What my mom doesn't know is that she is more a mother to me now than she ever was. Previous generations may have seen parenting as an 18 year stint with a clock-in, clock-out approach, but not my mom.

When I graduated from college, something odd happened. In the section of my heart where I should have cut the tethers to my mother and established my own methods of being a woman, I found that I needed her more. If anything, growing older has not quenched my need for mom, it has made the hunger larger. Which shocked me.

When I returned from my honeymoon with Dan, she gave us a container with flank steak which she had marinated. "For your first dinner home," she offered, knowing we were tired from our flight.

And that's not all.

When I gave birth to my first baby, I heard the door to my childhood shut firmly. I looked to my mother who was already holding Morgan, just minutes old, and knew that I needed her voice more than ever. It was my mother who taught me how to hold Morgan and quiet her fussiness as a baby.

It was my mother who taught me to dress the way you want to be treated, who wore nice outfits when she was a teacher even though her students were her own children.

It was my mother who taught me to be emotionally honest, to embrace life as a whole.

If it weren't for my mother, I wouldn't know what was happening to my body when I started to feel age creep upon me. My body began to give me new messages which I had never heard before. She told me the path that was ahead and offered suggestions.

My mother taught me about inclusion. About fighting for voiceless people, about seeing people who are usually invisible. She befriended poor and rich alike without any change in her demeanor.

By the time I am an old woman, I won't know what part of womanhood is my contribution or hers; I value her thoughts so much. She will never die while I live.

Some women sneer at the more base tasks of motherhood. It's probably because they don't see them for the building blocks that they are.

That introducing an infant to sweet potato mash as their little wayward tongue tries to navigate eating solid food and urging them to try Brussels sprouts when they are eleven might lead to them giving sushi a whirl on their first meeting with their boss when they're twenty-one.

Or allowing a 4 year old to express herself through an outfit that might induce seizures and holding your tongue when your 16 year old wears fluorescent pink lipstick could yield a child so confident in fashion mishaps that he or she has their own clothing line.

A three year old boy who feels his mother lean over his little body in order to help him hold the bat and feel the stance his chubby legs will need to know for years of baseball is not only learning that his mother is his exoskeleton, but that through vision and passion and muscle memory he can take an object and set it on another path.

Children need moms to brush their hair not because their wild locks will embarrass, but because the scalp is covered with nerve endings; each and every one of those receptors receives the message, "Someone is lovingly touching me and taking care of me" and THAT message is necessary so that children will grow into adults who know physical love in safe, beautiful ways.

Because of my mother, I don't see motherhood as a job for the uneducated or unenlightened.

What I see is a woman who has carefully fed and clothed and loved one child and then another.
And then three more after those two.
And somehow she has caused the threadbare education she received as a mother to be a wild, thriving enterprise. It's crazy. She started with nothing and is now flooded with people who attribute their life to her.

She has raised five humans to ask questions and find answers. To be honest and brave. To be kind and merciful. To be wary of toxic people and be firm in their resolutions about life. To try new foods and take care of our body. To say sorry and to really mean it. To grow things. To take care of animals and enjoy yard sales.

It's the wild, redemptive, ripple effect of motherhood. New chances every day to love and mold and express and grow. And it never ends. Full of second chances. Each day, each year offers new, exciting ways to mother.

Some women check out in life, but not my mom.

Her work has been slow. You won't see her featured on the Today Show, but as any business person knows, slow growth is the best. It's solid, intentional. Has a good foundation for life.

For starting with nothing, working with no end in sight and gaining a people she can call her own.
I'm proud of my mom.