(Stick with me through this one, friends. It's long, but I hope it's worth it.) *All names have been changed.
It's approaching that time of year again…the day of
breakfast in bed, greeting cards, and grocery store floral arrangements.
Mother's Day.
It's a day for mom to bask in the glory of the day reserved
just for her, a day for acknowledging the sacrificial love of mothers and
showing our appreciation.
My youngest son, Caleb, was born on Mother's Day weekend,
and I couldn't have prepared myself for the absolutely spellbinding glow which surrounded
us the weekend of his birth. Family came from far and wide and we passed around
the baby bundle, mothers and grandmothers, in-laws and sisters, overtaken and
bonded together in strength and fragility, a veritable village right there in
the hospital suite. We huddled in circles and gave each other knowing glances, uttered
thanks to Jesus and cried for the way perfect, tiny fingers can level a person
with gratitude.
The weekend remains in my memory a sort of Ebenezer, an
altar of remembrance. It's a place where the veil between natural and
supernatural was so papery thin I could peer right through it. It was otherworldly
and I think this must be what heaven is like. Quiet strength, a sense of
absolute perfection, unrestrained awe. I wonder if the drugs had anything to do
with it. The weekend of Caleb's birth was self-contained, a capsule of ethereal
beauty, wistful and glorious. My own mother was there, and my mother-in-law and
her mother, too, loving on our other kids and forming between our hospital room and home a bridge of matriarchal love, a family bond like I haven't experienced before
or since.
I thought my skin might split open for its inability to
contain the magnificence of those moments as they unfolded. The raspy whimper
and rattled breaths of this new human, learning that he had lungs. The perfect,
jaundiced skin that made him look like he'd been lounging on a beach in Florida
for the last nine months instead of wriggling around in my guts, swimming in placenta
slime. He was my only planned pregnancy of the three, and I wasn't so scared
this time around, having a pretty decent grasp of what all I was in for.
Every year when Mother's Day rolls around, I am transported
back to the hospital room with it's aura of wonder and gratitude. It is a gift
in itself to have this memory, to commemorate my day of mom-appreciation by
celebrating one of my own personal best moments of motherhood. But the truth
is, I have a love-hate relationship with Mother's Day. I mean, don't return the
chocolates or anything. I'll roll with the Hallmark holiday like any good
consumerist, but the day is a little bittersweet for me.
I am gun-shy to celebrate motherhood as a singularly
wonderful experience when I have lived in the land of unfit mothers. I was a housemom at a children's home. I am involved in the foster care system. I have
seen the way a wounded child curls up on himself at the realization that the
entire world goes on believing that mothers are good and careful and
sacrificial. What about the mothers who aren't? What about the children of the
mothers who aren't?
Last year we attended the Mother's Day service at Podunk
Baptist. The kids crafted wire crosses and construction paper cards in Sunday school,
then filed to the front forming a conga line in front of the baptismal. The pastor
asked the mothers to stand and their prospective children honored each one of
us with a single carnation and their handmade gifts. I was quite the spectacle,
a mother hen surrounded by eleven little chicks, standing in substitute for the
real thing. I received my carnation bouquet and gushed over hand-crafted goodies
in place of the mothers who couldn't or wouldn't be there, those that were in
prison or inpatient centers or graves.
It was sweet and it was beautiful, but it was
gut-wrenchingly awful at the same time. We listened to Pastor go on about
how wonderful mothers were and the boys sank deeper and deeper into the pew. I
kept my eye on Levi, just praying he could tune out the words. It would be his
first mother's day since his own Mama passed away. The kid had a reputation for
explosive tendencies and I was sure we were about to experience one, right here
in church. It was all just too much and tension like poisonous gas filled the
sanctuary.
Minutes, then hours, dragged on with painful delay and I suddenly
hated Mother's Day. I hated the whole idea of it. I hated the way well-meaning
words and pink carnations stripped these kids of security in an instant, that a
day on the calendar, just another Sunday, could spiral us all out of control.
After church, the day went downhill. One by one, the boys
each lost their cool in a sickening domino effect. Blowups, meltdowns, slammed
doors, hot tears…and that was just me. By bedtime, I never wanted to
celebrate Mother's Day again.
Up yours, Hallmark.*
I don't know how to feel about things, now. I am not the
mother hen anymore, and the construction paper cards I collect this year will
be the happy type, the type that symbolize what motherhood is supposed to be. But
I haven't forgotten what it looks like for the other half, for the children
whose hearts are left aching and empty on a certain Sunday every May, and a big
space for these boys is still reserved within. I have a child of my heart, this
year, who is not yet where he belongs, and even in the best case (if the adoption
goes through without a hitch), I will be a forever substitute for the mother that
should have been, the one who lays in eternal sleep.
I think, too, about several friends who are struggling with
infertility, one of whom has fought her body for nearly a decade, trying for the
precious new life she longs for and, if you ask me, so totally deserves. I want
a baby for her so badly I'd extract my own uterus and give it to her if I
thought it would help. Though I see her so clearly as a mother who doesn't have
kids yet, but will, and though she'll be celebrating her own
mother on that day, I am angry on her behalf, at the calendar and even a little
at God, because surely this must be an oversight, a mistake. Surely, with so
many mothers who can't and who won't, there's room in the Mommy Club for this
woman who is mindful and wonderful, educated and faithful, capable and so much
more worthy than me.
I struggle to find solidarity with my infertile friends under
the guilt of having healthy, happy children, and two of them while
actively trying to prevent pregnancy. It matters and though there is
nothing I can do about it, with Mother's Day looming, I am aware for the others, the folks who are cringing from under the covers or behind mimosas in a
restaurant full of beaming mothers effortlessly sporting spring fashions,
telling labor stories and basking in the glow of their reward, a brunch smothered
in Hollandaise sauce.
As ever, the lack of control over the whole roulette wheel
of it is maddening. I celebrate the beauty and amazement of a day that brings
pain to so many and know that I just don't see the whole picture. I grip
tightly to that and whisper thank yous to the heavens even while crying
out why? I weep with gratitude and shake my fist at the brokenness of
this place, hit my knees and lift my hands, all at once.
Maybe it's all we can do in this world, lift hands, cry out.
Say
thank you and
why and
oh, wow. Wrap wings as hens
around little chicks, and let the hurt transform.
(*Disclaimer: This is not a dig at Hallmark directly. I, actually, am quite fond of Hallmark, particularly of their Dayspring division, and actually hold them in high esteem as one of the most generous, authentic, compassionate companies I'm aware of. Rather, it's the "Hallmark culture" we're probably all guilty of buying into, to some degree, the way we think a holiday is
supposed to make us feel, etc. Seriously, love you Hallmark folks. For real.)
Linking up to Imperfect Prose over at
Emily's place... my *favorite* way to spend a Thursday-ish.
