Mother's Day

Mother's Day is complicated for me. Despite my recent change in status, it is still a day when all I can think about is my own mother. No matter where I am or what else is going on, it is a day each year when I am forced to reflect on the fact that I am a motherless daughter.

There are other days in the year, of course, when I think about the fact that my mother is gone. There are the big events that I can't imagine going through without her, that I eventually do go through. There are also plenty of non-event days when I miss her, days that are just typical, whether good or bad; days when I would have, when she was here, called her up to process things. But on Mother's Day, all those big event and non-event days come together, for me to take stock of how they've accumulated in the years since she's been gone.

Some years I handle the inventory-taking better than others. One year not long ago, I was with a handful of staff members and students on a school trip in Maine on Mother's Day. During a break, we had some time to walk around town and lots of the kids went off to call their moms and shop for gifts. Jenna was in the eleventh grade at the time; her own mother had died recently. Both of our mothers died of cancer on the day before their birthdays—what are the odds? (If you know the answer, please don't tell me because I'll just think your math skills are freaky!) Anyway, Jenna and I walked around town together, enjoying each other's snarky comments about all the stupid shops selling all the stupid stuff for that most stupid of supposed holidays. It did the job; we held ourselves together and managed to laugh.

At this point, I remember more Mother's Days without my mother than those spent with her. The only thing I can remember doing for my mom on Mother's Day was making her homemade cards and making her breakfast in bed, which I'm sure we did more than once. I don’t know whose idea of a good time breakfast in bed is, but as I think about it now it seems pretty horrible. I mean, crumbs in bed? That's gross. And how can you enjoy your coffee when you're trying to balance all that stuff on your lap? And being stuck there in your pajamas on a beautiful spring day…it makes me antsy just thinking about it. I wonder what she thought of it all.

My mother was 46 when she died, and I was 21. Even then, I thought 46 was young, but now…oh my god! I can't even think about how young she was. I miss everything about her, and I even miss the things I hadn't experienced yet. More and more I miss the adult conversations we never got to have. I don't think I ever even talked with her about the possibility of having a kid of my own someday...When she died I was only recently evolving out of the whacky idea that I would be some sort of high powered lawyer, living in New York City, remaining single and driving a (get this..) Corvette. What? I don't even know where that came from! Well, I kind of do: I wanted to save the world and I imagined crushing the bad guys and locking their asses up. And, I guess I thought I'd find a lot of bad guys in New York City. Anyway, fast forward through college in Vermont and I'm living the life I eventually imagined…Except for the kid, because I never really imagined her until she did a push up on my chest two minutes after she was born so she could get a better look at her dad.

That's the kind of thing I wish I could talk to my mom about.

When I was in college I called my mom every day. I'm not exaggerating. I called her every day. I had wonderful friends in college, who are still my wonderful friends, and still I needed to process things by talking them through with my mom. The bad things didn't go away until she put them in perspective, and the good things didn't seem real until I could share them with her.

And so, maybe that's why I still don't really feel like a mother, because I haven't been able to talk with her about it. She hasn't, just by being here, helped make it real.

Quinn is real of course. And when I think of her, I don't feel like a stranger, I feel a profound connection to her. I feel proud and possessive and I feel the weight of a tremendous responsibility. And I feel love like I have never imagined it. I feel ferocious rage when I imagine anyone ever doing anything to harm her, and I feel the entire world go blurry in my peripheral vision fifty times a day while I am watching her. But, I still mostly just feel like Quinn's Really Big Fan.

My mother, when I asked her where babies come from, told me: "a place near your leg." It wasn't a lie, and her answer was good enough to satisfy me for an embarrassing number of years. And that's just what I'm looking for now…some sort of magic answer (beyond the obvious one about giving birth). You'll feel like a mother when…

The other night, we took Quinn with us when we went out for a burger. She sits in a high chair now, so I brought her dinner along too. When she was done, food was smeared on both cheeks. Without realizing what I was doing, I dipped my napkin into my water glass…as I reached out to clean Quinn's face, she grimaced and turned away in what seemed like slow motion. And in that desperate "Mom! NOOOOOOO!" look on her face, I realized I was looking at myself, through my mother's eyes, on the dipping end of the napkin.

It's not much, but it's a start. In the meantime, I've been working, not so secretly, on my campaign to have "Mumma" be Quinn's first word. She talks a lot now, in her own language, and one of the sounds she's working on is mmuh-mmuh-mmuh. Whenever she says it I try to jump out in front of her with a big happy smile on my face and offer her something she might like. It's shameless, I know. And I also know that all this effort will likely result in her calling for her dad first. Based on how I look, she probably still doesn't even realize we're related. And, to my great sadness, she'll never know her maternal grandmother, whose name she has as part of her own, except through my stories and some her Aunt Amy will tell her.

In her early career, my mom was an elementary school teacher—kindergarten and first grade. I have a vague memory of going to school with her once or twice, but I never really knew that part of my mom—that part where she was in charge of a room full of little kids, helping them button their sweaters and read books and draw pictures. I wish did, because then maybe I'd know what it would look like to see my mom helping Quinn put on her sweater, or read books, or maybe head off through the yard on a walk. I wish I could see them interact. Maybe that would anchor me in some way, as the link between two souls I love…I could exist simultaneously as daughter and mother, instead of one without the other.

If she were still here, this would be her first Mother's Day as a grandmother. My mom was a vivacious woman. She loved life, she loved us, she loved flowers and puppies and golf and fast cars (maybe that's where my Corvette gene came from?), she loved homegrown tomatoes, playing the piano, decorating cakes, Johnny Mathas, Julio Iglesias, Robert Redford, Tom Selleck, and her high school sweetheart who is also my dad. She loved playing tennis on summer evenings, she loved swimming, she loved pinching my butt (despite my consternation) whenever she followed me up the stairs. She loved the two or three Pink Lady's Slippers that grew in the woods behind our house, and she would have really loved the dozens of them that grow in the woods behind mine…they bloom each year right around Mother's Day. She loved scallops and holidays and Danielle Steele novels and she loved braiding my sister's hair like Princess Leia. She loved making things—artsy craftsy things. She loved the color pink and she loved making me wear the color pink, long before I was prepared for pink. She loved that my sister came along and actually wanted to be a girl (dolls, dresses, the whole shebang). She loved to laugh. She loved sticking her thumb in our bruises and saying, "Aww, Honey! You have a bruise!" And of all these things that my mom loved, I bet she would have really loved, more than most of them, being a grandmother. 

Long before Quinn came along, to begin the next generation of Claire's daughters, my mother was already grand.