And here we are again, in 2024.
I don't have much to update, except that we've made it through another year as mothers, grandmothers, etc.
Cheers to all. Enjoy!
In honor of Mother's Day, I'm posting the article I wrote that appeared in HER magazine, May 2009 (back story - it has been edited):
Good day, Younglings. Mother's Day is Sunday, May 14. And that's why this blog gets re-posted somewhere on social media EVERY YEAR since its original publication.
Read on, Padawans, and enlightened you will be:
OH! I AM MY MOTHER!
Oh, yes! I definitely am! And that’s perfectly okay with me.
People have always considered me a “chip off the ol’ block.” Some women would have flames bursting from their eyes if anyone told them this, but not me. My mom is funny, beautiful, and doesn’t take a lot of crap from anybody. I for sure got the funny part, because if I can make people laugh, I’ve done my good deed for the day. I’m still working on the beautiful part. That always took some work, because my mother couldn’t get me to wear a dress or makeup without great gnashing of teeth. She’s been accused of dressing up to clean house. I’m accused of having too many dresses and not wearing any of them.
When I got married, I instantly became the mother of four. Then there was a fifth, but that's another story for another time. I helped raised two of them on an everyday basis: girls, age six and nine at the time. I skipped colic, diapers, and potty training and went straight to slumber parties and tubes of lipstick left in the pocket of a pair of pants that got put into the dryer.
After a month went by, I called my mother and said, “I apologize for everything I’ve ever done.” I was in my late twenties, so that covered a lot of ground.
All five of these children are grown now; four have children of their own. This made me a grandmother at 31. (I could insert one of those shock emojis here, but I’ll refrain.) It wasn’t until I started hanging with the grandkids that I really noticed how much I was saying things like, “Scat, Tom!” when someone sneezed. I haven’t started calling everyone “shug” yet, but that might be a future endeavor.
I was standing in line at the local discount shopping mecca noticing the covers of women’s magazines, and thought, “Gee! I knew that in the fifth grade!” How? Because my mother told me. She knows everything, like the names of obscure actors all the way back to the 1930s. My children now ask me, “Who’s that?” when old black and white films turn up on services that stream old movies, like Tubi and Freevee. Nine times out of ten, I know exactly who they are, thanks to excellent maternal guidance.
My mom and I definitely have different musical tastes, although she did think some of Poison’s tunes were kinda catchy. (I was a teenager in the 80s, so...) Without her, I wouldn’t have Frankie Laine and Andy Williams on my Spotify "liked" songs list, right alongside Black Sabbath and Metallica. “The Theme for Rawhide” coming on right after “Iron Man” upsets the passengers in my car somewhat, but you know what? I really don’t care. “Rollin’, rollin’, rollin…”
My mother loves to read, and I remember frequent trips to the library as a child. She introduced me to Stephen King, and we both had extreme fears of Plymouth automobiles for a while. (Remember Christine?) I don’t know if that explains my sister’s avid interest in the film version of Cujo, but oh, well. If I had time, I’d follow Mom’s lead and join a book club, but I don’t think “Building Online Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom” is on Oprah’s reading list.
Mother-daughter relationships are complicated. Every woman knows this. Especially if they survived their teenage years and still have both arms and legs. Several films have captured the dynamic: Terms of Endearment, Postcards from the Edge, Steel Magnolias, and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. (Hmm…three of those starred Shirley MacLaine. Wonder what that means?) Some women strive to be like their mothers, others…not so much. Who knows how the Kardashian's offspring will turn out. We won’t even mention Joan Crawford or the Octo-Mom. Maybe Shirley MacLaine could step in and line up everybody’s chakras.
I learned an entirely new facet of motherhood in 2021 when I lost one of my daughters, my youngest. There are no words to describe the devastation and the eventual emptiness the loss of a child can leave behind. I've known mothers who have lived this experience and now I fully understand. It's not a club one wants to belong to, nor is it a club that seeks new members. We'd rather you didn't join. Even though I wasn't there at the very beginning of her journey, I was there to prepare her for her final journey, that she was radiant, that she would "always be young, always be beautiful." That daughter was also a mother, and now as I watch her sons grow up without her, and remember my last moments with her, I realize that I, too, inspired her to say, "Oh, I am my mother!"
In closing, regardless of whatever may have happened between birth and the day we looked at a stray digital photo and said, “Oh, wait! That’s a picture of ME! I thought it was my mom!,” one thing is certain: We are all shaped into who we are as women because of our mothers, no matter what the relationship may be. Some of us have spent every day of our lives with our mothers. Others were adopted, or separated from their mothers due to divorce or death or other circumstances. Be proud of those traits you’ve picked up, either consciously or unconsciously, and remember those special women on their day this month. Without them, you wouldn’t be reading (or listening to) this column, and I wouldn’t be writing it!
THANKS TO ALL THOSE MOTHERS OUT THERE!! YOU ARE LOVED!!
