Son Day

This might just be the most impossible string of words that I have ever attempted to weave together. The impossibility lies in my intention for them to convey what cannot adequately be conveyed in words. There is also my hope that these words will outlast me and breathe unending love into those who will read them and refer to them on cloudy days.

This has all come about from the ache in my heart that misses my mother even more with each passing Mother’s Day. It gets harder. And more filled with regret for all that I did and did not do.

I realize that not everyone has had the great good fortune of being raised in loving environments with those who loved them and protected them in the ways they most truly needed.

I also realize that sometimes parents can be deeply flawed and yet somehow, someway, their intention to love surpasses their inherent shortcomings.

My parents are no longer present on this Earth. As time passes, I miss them more. I forgive what I did not understand. And I pray to be forgiven.

There is a strength and certainty and protective, guiding force that my father bestowed on me. And I have witnessed my own son, who became a father at a tender age, become a father who left me breathless in his capacity to care for his children in ways that brought me to my knees in honor of his heart.  He challenges my own perceptions in his quest for truth and his questioning of what often goes unquestioned. He inspires me and makes me laugh out loud at times when I need it most.  I have also witnessed my youngest son become the wise counsel and champion and advocate of his nieces and nephews and the children of friends. He is the sought out confidante and trusted shoulder and fatherly figure whose presence brings safety and comfort. Because he will tell the truth and model it with his own heart. And his heart is a model I can only hope to aspire to.

While witnessing the loving , paternal strength and trustworthiness of my sons, it has occurred to me this Mother’s Day, that they also embody and fully radiate their capacity to Mother their Mother.

My sons were born to a child. For most of their lives I was attempting to grow up with them. But they have far surpassed me.

For reasons I cannot explain, I seem to have always known, or at least attempted, to show up at times of sorrow and pain and loss. I seem to know how to reach out to the cries of this world. But I have not yet had a definitive relationship with what I call Joy, except for the fact of my Sons. What my sons do not know is that without their presence and the gifts and lessons they humble me with, the essence of Joy would have been elusive to me for most of my life.

I have realized lately that I have been blessed to birth children who now give birth to me. And they hold within themselves the duality of the love that is both fatherly and motherly and transcendent of both.

I am now the grateful recipient of their great frustration! I am impossible. And unruly. And I want to do it all by myself. I am stubborn and headstrong and at times I am not the best communicator. I am a sixty five year old teenager. And sometimes I hurt them in ways in which I often won’t know. I make more mistakes in a day than I can count. Or even recognize.

And yet. I was chosen to be privileged enough to become the mother of these sons. Who love me more than I love myself. Sons who forgive me and nurture me and support me. Boys who’ve grown into men who I am so proud to know. Men who mother me more tenderly and firmly and softly and strongly than I feel deserving of.

Mother love has come to me in many ways. Through the love of my mother whose presence I miss more with each passing day. Through the love of my grandchildren and my great granddaughter. Through the fierce love of my siblings and friends. Through my beautiful daughter from another mother. Mother love has come to bless me through so many tender and beloved hearts.

But this coming Mother’s Day and all others to follow, will also forever more be Son Day for me.  And I will forever be grateful for the ways in which they mother me and for the privilege of being their mother.

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