I shared this idea with a group of folks last year and as we approach Mother’s Day 2023, the thought popped up again. I know women who may never bear children but are terrific mothers. Their wisdom, kindness, care and concern for others deepens their relationships and creates “the family we choose”. I didn’t always have a great relationship with my mother. I didn’t know my father at all. I saw my mother as someone who worked a job, cleaned the house, played Scrabble, did word search puzzles, and was creative in amazing ways. She was also a bit cold, hard, distant and unapproachable. She grew up with a mother who was a young widow at the end of World War 2. I met her twice. My memories are faint. There was no relationship with my grandmother Tillie. Now, thanks to social media, my mom’s side of the family acclaims my grandmother highly, as a talented and creative, generous woman, even in her poverty while raising five children, one with polio. I suppose my mother learned to be hard, distant and unapproachable in large part because she needed those characteristics to deal the pain and even trauma of the era and lifestyle in which she was raised.
She came to the U.S. a single woman, eager to see what our family who emigrated here came to see. Shortly after her arrival, she got a job in a factory as she had done in her home of Scotland. She also discovered she was pregnant–with me. She had come with a plan to stay two years and discover America. She must have had dreams or expectations about her time here. All that changed quickly. She thankfully was staying with a cousin, who would become my godmother, and had other family around her. I was named after my Aunt Cathie, whom we lived with after I was born. She met the man who became my stepfather and had two other children. My dad’s mother and his other family treated me like I was family from the beginning. My grandmother Ramona taught me Spanish as my first language when I had been sent to live with her for a couple of years as a toddler. Ramona and my godmother, Theresa, became mother figures in my life. They mothered me by caring for me, teaching and training me. They made sacrifices by mothering me. I never knew that of course, but as a mother myself, I can look back and know they took time away from their own lives and their own children to care for me.
I became a preschool teacher’s aide at age 16 after having been a babysitter to my sister and other children around the neighborhood. You could say I practiced mothering in those settings. I taught and cared for these children, played with them, cooked for and fed them, and I came to love many of them. I became a mother at age 29. I stayed in loose contact with my grandmother and my godmother as I traveled with country with my military husband and along the way I met some ladies who continued to impart their wisdom and caring. Being a military wife can be quite solitary. Thankfully I found other Navy wives who supported me, and I helped support them by babysitting, hanging out, listening, laughing, and sharing food or resources, as they did with me.
When my godmother developed dementia, I decided I would begin visiting her again, to help my godfather but also to reconnect while she still had some cognition. I guess it was a way to make up for the not-so-great relationship with my own mother, who had died in 2007 (She was My First Mistake as described in one of my first podcast episodes). I sang with Theresa, made her food, washed her feet, applied lotion and cleaned her. I mothered her. Her death was tough on me because of the sacrifices I had made as well as the renewed relationship I had with her.
My kids are adults now. My daughter lives with us presently, and I have been able to have “do overs” for the mistakes I made along the way while raising her. My kids are so kind and gracious that they remained in relationship with me even though I have been a Tough Mother, a woman always protecting them since their dad was rarely around, teaching and training, laughing, and taking road trips together. My son still says he feels so reassured after we have phone calls together. I made lots of mistakes and fell short often. They still love me. They have made sacrifices for me, have cared for me, have taught me plenty, and make me laugh and cry with joy.
As I consider this day of brunch and flowers and Mother’s Day cards, I realize I already received the gifts I desire most: kids who still want relationship with me. My husband, now retired from the Navy, comes home every night and thanks me for taking care of the family and the household. He likes to cook for me, too, and even cleans up afterward. I am blessed! Despite the mistakes my mom made, sometimes the coldness I felt, I loved all of these women deeply. They made so many sacrifices for me. They fell short, too, don’t get me wrong. I try not to dwell in that head space, though, because I would much rather recall the happy times: the times of giving and teaching and training, and let the not-so-great times remain in the past.
Wherever you may be with your mother or motherers, I hope you can grasp the joy and let the not-so-great stuff hang out in the background, perhaps as a reminder that we all fall short–sometimes in huge ways–but, when we can mother the unmothered or undermothered, maybe it will soften the blows we took growing up. Take a look at some mothering for this baby elephant. https://youtube.com/shorts/8azxYtvGrJ0?feature=share