The Fickle Austinite

I hope that one day you love someone. I mean really love them. I hope you love them not only in spite of their idiosyncrasies and faults. But also because of them.

I hope one day that you see someone. I mean really see them. I hope you see them not only in their humanness and frailty, but also in the strengths and in the amazing qualities those weaknesses build.

I hope one day you want someone. I mean really want them. I hope you want them inside and out. Not only on their good days where they shine brighter than the stars, but on their bad days, when they are hidden, broken and maybe in despair.

I hope one day you trust someone. I mean really trust them. I hope you trust them with wild, insatiable and incredible abandon, heart, mind, soul and body. Not only when they provide you with all of the safeties and concerns, but also against all odds, in those moments where everything in you screams that it’s not worth the fear.

I hope one day you hear someone. I mean really hear them. I hope you hear past the cognitive dissonance their roles in life deploy and hear their dreams, their passions and their truth. Not only that, I hope you hear the fears and failures that have brought them to it.

I hope one day you experience someone. I mean really experience them. Not only through the highs, but also the lows. And everywhere in between. I hope you get to do life with them and see the goodness they bring to not only you, but the world. I hope you experience them through joy and sorrow, health and wealth, sickness and poverty.

I hope that one day you reach across all of the fears, inconsistencies, red flags and oddities. I hope one day you find your way out from behind the walls you’ve built to stay safe and I hope one day you live.

I hope you really live.

Mother…. The word brings up so many feelings and whether those feelings are warm and comforting or upsetting and anxiety producing, they all relate to the most important person in our lives. If our mother had not chosen to stay pregnant and birth us, we would not be here. That’s pretty significant. No one is motherless. We all have a mother, whether we know her and get to experience life with her, or lose her (whether it was her choice or not) way too soon, we all have a mother. And unfailingly, our experiences with our mother dictate how we feel when we think of the day that we are supposed to celebrate her.

Mother’s Day…. For me, the words expose the void within. No matter how many years pass, it still awakens an ache. There is so much I’d like to know, so much I’d like to talk about. There are so many memories we didn’t get to make. She only saw one daughter graduate and that was from kindergarten. One moment she was there, the next she was gone. The insidious “punch in the gut” feeling of being told this never goes away. It hides and then sucker punches me at the strangest times. After all of these years, 43 to be exact, you would think I could get through mother’s day without crying. It hides and I forget that I need to make plans to be with my sister and our families and then #boom…it’s too late. I have to decide if I’m going to pretend that the day and my pain doesn’t exist or if I’m going try to focus on my own motherhood and hope I don’t have an emotional melt down at church while playing the ‘big pretend’. I experience so many feelings on this day, joy for my boys and gratitude for my own motherhood, joy for others who still get to celebrate with their mothers and then, in contrast the sadness that pulls at each joy as I try to tuck away thoughts of “what would it have been like if she’d turned 28, 38, 68?”. Of all feelings, the guilt is the strongest. Guilt that my boys don’t have a grandmother, guilt that I can’t just “get over it” and celebrate that I’m a mother to my boys, without this hunger to have had more time with her; guilt that I’m a little jealous of people who reach milestone after milestone with their mothers, and a deep sadness for others who are in my situation, especially my sister and my nieces, and for those who never had a loving mother at all.

As the years pass, I’m beginning to accept the conundrum of complex feelings. I greet them and I’m OK with them although I still wish that I could just look at the bright side, and only the bright side. I acknowledge and honor my feelings both the good and the bad. Then, I can celebrate my own motherhood and the motherhood of my friends. I can celebrate my dad’s wife in the woman who’s brought him joy and companionship for almost 30 years; I can just celebrate life and the moment, however fleeting, that I have with every person that I love.

I am not alone. I can feel my mom’s heart as I calm one of my anxious children, or talk to my sister or my niece’s or my dad about her, I can feel her breath in a gentle breeze in my hair and her kiss as the sun warms my face. I can experience her joy and faithfulness as spring comes unfailingly after even the darkest and coldest of winters! I can feel her hands as I play the piano and imagine her voice as I write a new song. I can experience her love and spirituality as I read her bible, the word of the Savior she loved so much. I am alive.

Mother, to have one, and to be one, is the greatest gift. And no matter how I get there, that is the truth I end back up at, every year.