Obligatory Mother’s Day Post

I have a love/hate relationship with Mother’s Day. Unsurprisingly, I don’t remember the first several Mother’s Days of my life. Then, when I was seven, my mother died. Following that were 17 Mother’s Days spent like a fish out of water, giving cards and gifts to the many “mothers” in my life, trying like hell to ignore the mother-shaped hole in my heart until sundown when the tears came. And they always came.

Then, there was the Mother’s Day two months after we lost our first baby, just in case having a dead mother on Mother’s Day isn’t hard enough. Try having just miscarried a baby too. I guess you could say that until lately, it’s been mostly a hate relationship with Mother’s Day.

The last three years, however, have been on an upswing. Mother’s Day 2010 was just about a month after discovering I was pregnant with Maggie. The past two have been celebrated with me as the Mother, the one recieving attention, love, and gifts. It’s weird. And also surprsingly beautiful.

I still usually wake up on the second Sunday in May (I think that’s what it is) feeling so tight in my chest, so chock full of missing her, that I think it might kill me to take a breath. 21 years later. But I do it anyway. I put my feet to the floor, and take that breath, and every breath after. I get out of bed and greet my life. And on the second Sunday in May 2012, I walked downstairs to a vase full of flowers from our garden, and strawberry handprints from my little girl.

It fills me with so much hope, and grief, and longing, and more hope, and finally, grace. I think my mother, she would understand.

Strawberry handprint — literally.