Mothering the Mother

Posted on | February 20, 2014 | 6 Comments

Last week, I penned a short sympathy note to a judge in my district who lost her mother. In writing the note, I thought about who I am BECAUSE of having my mother and who I would be without her. The words flowed off my pen and I found myself wiping away tears as I told this judge, someone I am not even close to outside the courtroom, the words I hadn’t even realized to be true before that very moment:

“There are two things that have made me the person I am today: having a mother, and being a mother. I can not imagine the sorrow I would feel at losing the privilege to align myself in either category.”

Having a mother and being a mother.

Is being a woman more than that? Certainly.

Is being a woman less than that? I wouldn’t know.

Because to me, being able to sandwich myself in this world between the two people who made me who I am, who taught me to love and to fear in ways I never knew possible… that is the greatest gift of all time.

I call my mother most every morning, not because I have to, but because being J’s mother makes me so damn grateful to have a mother that I want to remind myself she’s still there… still breathing… still warmly answering the phone in her brand of southern drawl. I call her to remind myself that there is still someone on this planet who believes that I am amazing and beautiful and practically perfect in every way. I call her to remind myself that someone on this earth loves me way that I love my son… fearfully, honestly, with a rush of angst and horror and admiration and heart wrenching warmth. A rush that only comes with the realization that you love something tangible with an intangible sense of guilt and awareness that at any moment they could be stripped away from you.

My God, at any moment I could become motherless.

Dear God, at any moment I could become childless.

This morning, I yelled “I love you” at my four year old as he climbed the steps to his classroom, basking in the few remaining moments of my morning when I am still near enough to wrap him in my arms. I waved and blew a kiss and then I called my mother as I pulled away from the school, basking in the remaining moments of my life, the hopeful years and years of time where she will still answer the phone with her smiling Eastern North Carolina voice, ready to hear what I have to say and to remind me that I am so lucky to call myself two very special things:

Mothered and a Mother.

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