Mother's Day

Mother's Day is hard for me; I tend to go underground. Like most major holidays in this country, the greeting-card industry beats it to a pulp. I'm not saying moms don't deserve to be celebrated--the good ones deserve that and more--but I find it to be yet another "family holiday" that doesn't have a lot of room for people without families that look at least a little traditional.

My actual mother died in a car accident when I was two years old. This is a loss I am still trying to fully comprehend and grapple with at the age of forty. I think I have missed her more often and more deeply since I was thirty than any time of my life before that. I knew a lot of cool mothers growing up--a lot of my friends have great moms, and I credit a few of them with helping me survive my childhood. I stay in touch with most of them to this day. There are also wonderful women, such as my former mother-in-law, who have been the closest thing to mothers I've experienced in my life. I always try to remember, thank, and celebrate them as well.

I was not medically able to be a mother myself, and I really wanted to for a huge part of my life--in an ideal world, I wanted to have one child and adopt one child. Over the last ten years, I have resigned myself to the fact I don't really have the stamina anymore, my second husband has never really wanted kids, and I'm past wanting to raise a child now; I have accepted that my journey on the planet is a different one. However, since I did try to have a child for years and lost actual pregnancies, a part of me still and always mourns those losses. There is no one more pro-choice than myself on planet Earth that I've ever met, but when I was actively trying, the pregnancies I lost were real to me. Questions that went around my head and heart (things like this are not logical, they just are) included, Am I a mom? Was I ever a mom? If there is a heaven, are my kids there, will I be a mom there? One of my dear friends, one of two or three people I can even I can even mention these feelings to, told me yes, you were; yes, you are; yes, you will. Can I believe these things and still be pro-choice? I think so. It's not a black and white issue, and it gets a lot more gray when you fall into my category (whatever that is) and live a few decades.

Not getting to either have a mother or be a mother, at times I feel shut out of a huge part of not only life, but being female. A woman's life is far from pointless without children, and I am finding out just how NOT pointless it really can be. Society beats that whole issue to a pulp as well, and not just around Mother's Day. I love kids, I love moms, and I love women, but Mother's Day isn't a wonderful celebratory day in everyone's year.