Dear Mom,
Mother’s Day. I was thinking about you this morning and having a little internal monologue. This is my third one, without you.
Here I go, with that internal monologue. Something you used to say to me, was “allow me this little indulgence”…I’m asking that of you today.
There was this funny conversation we had once, about my kid, and how she was prone to doing the same *funny-grab-excited-hands* thing that you did when you wanted something. Only you’d understand what I’m talking about here, and that’s okay.
When I told you – “I can tell she’s got your genes, she does that IwantIwant hand thing you do”.
“I do that?”, you said. I nodded, you looked at me and said, “That’s funny. You teaching me about me. And she teaching you about me. I think that’s how this works”.
That’s the indulgence I’m asking you for, here. I’m seeing you more and more, every day, in me. I see you in my mothering, more now than ever. I remember, when I’d done something utterly stupid or you had to “lay down the law” (read: “I needed to hear the words” if you’re related to me…), you’d get that weird panicked look on your face, and your voice would hit that pitch. I knew that pitch. I knew that pitch meant “Catherine, you’ve really screwed up now”. I’ve heard that pitch in my voice now. All I can say on that is “I think that’s how this works”.
Is this how it works, though? Did you find Gaggy in your mothering, at some point, too? Did you want to kick yourself for it? Or did you find a weird kind of solace in it? Sometimes, I feel both. That weird reflection plays out in front of me and I am all “mouthful of teeth” as I hear you in me. I never got to ask you if you found Gaggy in your own mothering. If I had one minute to ask you one question, I’d ask you exactly that.
Thought I’d get through this year’s post without crying. Yeah, that’s not happening. It’s okay. Promise. I’m rambling now but, I swear, I have a point (there’s you, in me, again. hah).
My point is this – that reflection. That’s all I have of you now. Yes, I have the memories, the letters, the occasional physical item. But the thing that is ALWAYS there…it’s that reflection. I have that reflection of your love in my own life, my character, my parenting. It is in my questions and my conversations. You are in my current strange leanings towards “experimental cooking” I appear to be putting my family through (promise, I haven’t fried anything strange yet, nor will they allow me to do anything to an aubergine. haha. I’ve only just realised right now that my ‘experimental dinners’ are entirely you. On that note, how the heck DO you make Chinese fried rice!?!)
The funny thing about this reflection though, is that it’s not some flimsy kak in a mirror. It’s permanent. It’s not some fragile, weirdly skewed thing I see and can walk away from. It’s in every single movement.
Something like that, which refuses to budge or move on. That’s powerful. It’s a gigantically strong influence that sits within me. To have had that level of effect on life – on every single element…
The only way that reflection could have been so dramatically forced into being…is through love.
Today, I realised, in its full magnitude, as I connected the dots and put it together in words, that your love is a permanent, impenetrable force. It is an overwhelming, fierce and bigger-than-one-life bonanza. I realised it would continue to show for generations. I realised, mom, that your love was bigger than me, bigger than you, bigger than I had ever truly estimated.
So, at night, when I look over at my little-person-who-is-getting-so-big, and say “I love you bigger than the sky”, I know I do, because it is that sky of love that you created, and it continues to grow, every day.
What an impossible, yet utterly true, notion. Just like you.
You used to laugh to yourself and say that it was “an accident” that you were born. Mom, you weren’t. You were an impossible, yet utterly true, notion who came into being. Who went on to become the impossible, yet utterly true, notion of the mother I become, every day. Who went on to be the impossible, yet utterly true, notion of the daughter I am raising.
The truth? The truth is that you have not ceased to exist. You have continued.
The very permanence of you. The utterly impossible, yet utterly true, permanence of you.
Thank you.