“I made you.”
I am bleary eyed and just waking up, with hot coffee and in a house full of love. Last night, over dinner, Luke and I were reminded, yet again, that we made this. We built this absolute swirl of a happy home with nothing but good intentions and while life threw us into thunderstorms. It’s the house where our friends step in and always know this is a safe, sweet place.
“We made this”, we say to each other.
My mum would’ve turned 77 today. In all of her learning of me and teaching of me, the lesson she taught me so fiercely was about the fortress. The inner strength and tower of unyielding power that you must create to survive and thrive in this world. I have that word in her handwriting tattooed on my shoulder, and I have the real life proof of the benefits of that fortress all around me.
While I mother my daughter, I remember that I am simply an extension of my mother to my daughter. I remember that I am an extension of my mother’s mothering.
When I pick up a lost dog, help someone who asks, or randomly decide to do something that others don’t understand until it’s done, I am an extension of my mother’s absolute force in the world.
When I make decisions and take actions, I do so without fear, for she taught me how to make them without being scared anymore. I am an extension of my mother’s absolute lack of fear. You could not scare her for a moment. When I think about how I used to talk to her about how to learn not to be scared (because I used to be a big old scaredy cat, of everything, all the time, every day, every moment), she would simply say:
“I made you.”
So, when I turn around and look at our home, and laugh about the Easter tree, and the massive pile of cook books, and the outside table where all the lives get lived, I know something else to be true too: Luke and I may have made this. But she did too.
Happy Birthday, UM. You made this too.
