WHEN I was growing up, we didn’t do a lot about Mother’s
Day. It wasn’t such a big deal as it is now, at least not in my family. I
suppose we kids crayoned cards and served the odd clumsy breakfast in bed. My
own mum certainly invited her mother and her mother-in-law for dinner, which
she cooked, and probably cleaned up after, too.
I remember being startled as a teenager when I visited my
aunt and her family in California in May and saw what a big deal Mother’s Day
was down there. They were not a showy family in general, but there were
presents, and tributes, and dinner at a restaurant. I suddenly realized that
since my mother was pretty great, too, I ought to have been making more of an
effort.
As an adult, I did. More importantly, though, I got to know,
and love, my mum as a person, as someone who had an interior life that wasn’t
defined by her children. She, like all mothers, had talents and interests that
she was perfectly happy not to share with us. If we were curious, fine, but if
not, that was fine, too.
What a surprise it is to realize that your parents are
individuals, whose own youths delineated their characters. Mum’s father, who
was really too old and too necessary to his four children to have volunteered
for World War II, had been killed at Dieppe. Just for starters, that was a
fundamental difference between how she grew up and how I did. Later on, as my
mother read the letters her parents had sent each other during the war, she
shared her observations on their relationship with me.
This is the gift we get when our parents’ lives are not cut
short, the great privilege of getting to know them in three dimensions. It
allows us to see one another as equals. Mother’s role no longer focuses on
bossing us around or trying to correct our inadequacies, although there are
plenty who can’t stop themselves, no matter how old their kids. Our parents
have wisdom to offer us, sure, but even better, they can give us the wonderful,
comfortable pleasure of their company.
It’s my mum as a friend whom I will miss this Mother’s Day
-- my first without her -- not my mother as “icon.” I didn’t have the
child-obsessed, ultra-involved parents who seem to be the modern ideal. My mum
didn’t spend my childhood crouching down to “bond” or play with me – the
assumption was that kids were meant to play with other kids.
We had the typical mother-daughter battles when I was a
teen. Then I grew up and started recognizing that Mum was smart, well-read,
curious, artistic, beautiful, stylish, prickly and a unique mixture of sensitive
and tough. She had many bad breaks in terms of her and my father’s health,
especially in her later years, but I almost never saw her cry. She was
critical, but fiercely loyal. Like my dad, who had been a social worker, she
had a deep sense of right and wrong, though the two of them didn’t always
concur on what that was.
What I miss most about my mother is her sense of humour -- her wit and her playfulness. For me, her naughty twinkle was a magnet, and as
an adult, I usually responded in kind. Nobody really “gets you” like your
mother. If you’re really lucky, you can eventually return the favour.
My husband Stanley didn’t have that chance. His mum died
suddenly, as a result of an aneurysm, shortly after he returned home from
university. He feels he never got to honour her the way she deserved, with his
full attention and an appreciation of who she really was.
One of his fondest memories of her is of a moment when she
stood up to him. She was a tiny woman, gentle and soft-spoken, with a
wonderfully kind heart – her sons were being funny whenever they called her
“Sarge.” But when Stanley announced that he wasn’t going to return from his
Calgary summer job to Ottawa to complete his final year of university because
he didn’t want to leave his girlfriend (moi), Vera laid down the law. She was,
obviously, right. She was probably right a lot. Stanley wishes he could have
told her so.
Of course, the thing about parents, including Stanley’s and
mine, is that they don’t just offer us role models to ape. They also tip us off
to ways we don’t want to be like them. (Likewise, parents see their own good
and bad qualities reflected in their kids, which makes for some uncomfortable
opportunities for morbid self-examination.) We are formed as much by our
reaction against certain qualities in our parents as we are by our affinities
with them. It’s hard not to feel hurt or offended as you watch your children
differentiating themselves from you and your spouse. The aspects of you that
they reject may well be the things you wouldn’t mind getting rid of, too.
But really, how much choice is involved in all this? Do any
of us remember making the decision to be flighty, or sociable, or testy, or
calm? Who can we blame for the things we don’t like in ourselves, unless we’re
prepared to be blamed by our children for things they may someday see as
shortcomings in their own personalities? It’s a complicated dance, this one
between parents and kids. Toes get stepped on. Not everybody likes the polka.
Nevertheless, Mother’s Day is now such big business in the
U.S. that it apparently prompts sales of some $14.6 billion. This Sunday, lots
of people will be paying tribute to their mothers with flowers and chocolates
and brunches out. Some kids may even do the totally ludicrous, presenting Ma
with a gift certificate from a company called Excitations, which offers
experience-based gifts like “swimming with sharks” and “race-car driving
lessons.”
Many of us, however, will be thinking fondly of mothers who
are gone. Chances are, we won’t feel guilty if we didn’t splurge on a lavish
gift for our last Mother’s Day together. But we may well wish we’d spent more
time getting to know the principal woman in our lives, figuring out what really
made her tick.
-kate@katezimmerman.ca
