Mom holds the space.

A visit to the coast for more completion.

Today, Mom's eighty-sixth birthday.  I was pretty quiet, here, around the house, and I've gone about as far as I need to, letting go, for now.  We finished up with more *objectia* in Oregon last week, which felt complete, and now, waking up in my own bed, was perfect, for today.  Moments ago, I put the finishing touches on dinner dishes, and thought to myself, 'Well, this sums motherhood up, on so many days'.  I'd like to be politically correct and say "parenthood", but as much as we've tried, in this house, to smash our gender roles, this feels pretty damned traditional, or whatever.

In memory of Mom, I made a stroganoff that is reminiscent of what she might have made for us years ago.  I threw a bit of effort at the thing, even making a roux, adding plenty of butter, and cooking with shallots(!).  Our  high school swimmer came home at about six and expressed her enthusiasm at my culinary efforts (often she's on her own at about this time).  She prepared her own bowl, as I was on my way to retrieve the younger from Martial Arts.  I knew that child number one would be squirreled away for the remainder of the night, chained to her homework.  I took a few bites of baguette dipped in gravy before heading out for dutiful driver-parent responsibilities. Little one and I returned to sit and quietly eat.  She mostly talked, I encouraged eating, and then, poof, "Can I read?".  Spouse has been gone since dark AM and is in meeting until after all this (even the blog post).  So I finish my glass of wine, clean the kitchen from top to bottom, reflect on a hardly eaten dinner, put an extra casserole in the fridge, thinking…'this is a lot of what this thing is about'.  Mom holds the space.  So often, it's a quick exchange, a ride, a comment, a request. We make all the arrangements, we make sure everything's in place, and then they're here, and they're gone, as soon as we blink an eye.

Making this stroganoff, I couldn't help but think of mom coming all the way to Vermont fifteen years ago, offering to make the dish for us as ripe new parents.  Me, in all my bohemian, new parent gusto, barely tolerated the offer, not nearly comprehending the compendium of cooking/prepping/planning skills that it actually takes to feed more than one other person for years and years and years on end. I had no idea how many fads preferences and timings and trends any one family cook must flex her weight around.  I simply had no idea.  And I guess that thought taps into the shards of grief that still live in my heart.  I've worked this drama to it's bitter end.  I feel so good, so complete, with both Mom and Dad.  But ever so often (OK, almost every day), there's a pang of total and utter regret.  Why couldn't we have cooked the stroganoff together, a hundred times?  Was I appreciative enough?  Why didn't I ask more questions?  Why was I so self-absorbed?   But of course, we all know the answer to that question, and it's relative, for me and anyone else, i suppose.  I was being and becoming who I needed to be, and Mom was loving me just the same, just as much, forever.
I'm so grateful for the memory of her undying love of me and my family.  Everyone deserves to have somebody, at least one, who sees all the brilliance, all the mediocrity, all the failures, and loves us all the same.

What's Really Hard…or…Why I Never Cry, Anymore.

For months, I thought the answer to this question was that I was deep in denial.  Talking about Mom, her opinions, her belongings, in the present tense, as if she were (and she sort of is) right here with me.  But now that time has passed I'm beginning to believe my shortage of tears is a sort of tribute to who my mom was to me, to other members of the family, and who I am trying to become, as I adopt the mantle of the matriarch of a family traditionally dominated by singular, strong, fair-minded women not prone to the whims of fashion, time, or circumstance.  My mother, her mother, and her mother before here were all only children, reared in upstanding Oregon homes.  College educated, craftswomen and homemakers, learned but never beyond their station in life.  The simplicity of austere, old-fashioned conservatism.  

Coupled with this strong will and ordered mind was the discretion honored by many folks my parents' age and older, plus my mom's own inclination to a very private personal life.  It wasn't until I was in my teens, (or perhaps older) that I learned that my own mother's parents were divorced when she was a young girl.  How it escaped me, as I grew up, that she and her mother were alone, together for most of her formative years and beyond is a puzzle to those of us raising children in this day and age, sharing as many secrets and life experiences as we see fit.  In a similar vein, the fact that I was adopted at birth was a hush-hush thing that even into my teenage years, we alluded to, rather than discuss directly.  Finally, when we did discuss the adoption, my parents shared with me that the lawyer who brokered my adoption assured my parents that birth parents were "tall" so I might fit in with my family.  I don't need to accent the extent to which that spirit has shifted today.  

And so, my experience of my mother is one of a woman who was fiercely loyal, proud, loved my brother and I without wavering, and offered a vision of life as an ordered path which a hard-working soul could navigate.  I have absolutely no recollection of my mother crying over the loss of her own mother, but I do remember vividly the weeks and weeks that she and my father and I spent, cleaning out that old Portland house.  It was a job that she embraced.  Certainly with love, and compassion for all of the memories and stories, but never in a maudlin fashion.  Take care of business.  My mother ran our own family with the charge of a highly intelligent, organized, purposeful being.  In her absence, as I read her dictates to my brother and I, as we prepared for her memorial service,  and as we divide our family's estate, the fact that she played her hand (as if it were bridge) perfectly.  Not a stone unturned.

I didnt even cry when Mom was getting ready to die.  It seemed like any minute she was gonna snap out of it and say something like, "what do you think, I'm dying?!"  So, I guess it's no surprise at all, that I never cry anymore.  Except, sometimes, when something sappy that would probably sort of offend Mom shows up, and for a brief respite I can cry quiet little tears, until I'm ready to get back to the project at hand, whatever it is.

"I'm Everything I am…because you loved me." 
-Celine Dion.