Mothers & Goodbyes

When I meet someone who does not have a mother, I know that person...In the darkness of my motherless life, I rose up to mother myself. I created the party of my life.

Today, in Wales, I said goodbye to my friend Jen, and her mother, Cheryl. I am off to the Frankfurt Book Fair tomorrow. Jen and I have known each other for decades. Her mother I met more recently; Jen is lucky in her mother. Cheryl walks the streets of her small Welsh village, drinking her wine each night, making friends at the pub, taking the train to London to shop and have a pint. She’s eighty but looks sixty. She adores Jen.  

When I was in my twenties, I wanted everyone’s mother. I hadn’t seen any mothering until I was an adult. I saw mothers wrap their arms around their children, laugh at their kids’ jokes, clap as their kids hula hooped or skipped rope. “Everyone can skip rope,” I would think, watching them clap. “Why didn’t anyone clap for me when I was a kid? I used to do jumping jacks.”  

I wanted that gush and roll of love. I wanted a mother. 

When I got married, six years after I left the Farm, my husband had a mother and a grandmother. Maybe his mother would want to mother me? I felt cute and lovable. 

Not so fast. She found me in the way of her dream, which was to live with her son indefinitely. Now that she would have to move out, I was in the way. 

“I told my mother,” she said, “that you are the cunt from the cult.” 

“Alliteration,” I thought. I've been working on poetry. “The grandmother probably wasn’t going to like me anyway. I’m an acquired taste.” 

That ex-mother-in-law is now ninety-one. My kids take care of her. She is going to stay at my house while they do some work on her apartment. She spends holidays with me and the kids. I make her favorite pies. She’s a good soul, a good grandmother. It was a rough start.

I struck out at my second crack at a mother-in-law. She hadn’t been enthusiastic about mothering or grand-mothering, so she wasn’t looking for others to mother. 

Every woman older than me got my side stare. Are you looking for a daughter? I’m easy, I’m grown. It would be fun. I’d bring over tequila, whiskey, and guacamole. I am the party. It didn’t work; I ended up in relationships with women that were uneven, and let’s face it: having a mother is one thing, being talked down to is another.    

When I meet someone who does not have a mother, I know that person. I know what it is like to fly solo, to make it up, to call your daughter when you should call your mother, because there is no mother. 

I said goodbye to Jen and her lovely mother. Here in London, I am cold. I no longer hold onto the dream of mothers.  

There was no one to create holidays and birthdays for me. In the darkness of my motherless life, I rose up to mother myself. I created the party of my life. I wanted Thanksgiving. I went to the Grand Canyon, played the Grand Canyon Suite, ate turkey with my feet hanging over the side. For Christmas and New Years, I drank champagne and toasted finding wild.

I am my own mother. I am.

I knew nothing about mothering. I learned all that love and wonder from my children.  

My daughter will be a good mother. She has armfuls of joy. Joy is like the fireworks at the Bowl on Saturday night. Joy is like a child running along the beach eating an orange popsicle. I love knowing that she will step into mothering like a dancer stepping onto the dance floor. Isn’t the best part of mothering playing the music, dancing with your child, the armfuls of joy?