Living Mothers Day

May 12, 2012

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day.  Your sister sent me a Mother’s Day card.  It is the first in many years.  I bought myself a bouquet of pink roses from you and put her card in front of it.

Happy Mother’s Day to me.

Tomorrow.

Aunt Karen called me earlier this week.  “We are going to Tillicum Village for a salmon bake on Sunday.  Want to go with us.?”  “Us” being your cousins Lisa and Ryan.  Lisa’s kids, Tanner, Alicia and baby Annalise.  Annalise you have not met. 

“We take a boat to Blake Island for a fun filled day.” 

“A boat to Blake Island for a fun filled day?”  I asked.

“Yep.”  She answered. 

“Count me in.” 

This morning my heart was beating funny in my chest.  It does that sometimes.  I thought “What if this is my last morning, my last afternoon, my last evening?”

Do you know how when someone asks you a question you really have to think about it?  You are shocked at the frankness of the question?  You have to spend a few moments with the question?

I did not want to answer. 

I did not want to accept the implication.

Taking a deep breath, willing my heart to find its rhythm, a thought rises up in me. 

Answer the question.  Be the question.

Live the question.

I hug my pillow around my head as the tears fall. 

First, I must take a moment to mourn.  Mourn my childhood.  Mourn the mother I never had. Mourn the years of adulthood that I lost fighting for survival.  Mourn the years I spent in marriages that kept me down.  Mourn the death of you.  Mourn your sister’s anger and estrangement.  Mourn my father and that I cannot be with him.

Nested in my bed, my home, sun shining through the blinds, birds chirping over morning seed the question persists.

“What if this is my last morning, my last afternoon, my last evening?”

What if?

First I let the tears finish falling.  Accept the grace of feeling.  Let myself linger there until I have had enough.

Sadie, laying next to me, shifts her weight against me.

This is a day of sunshine.  A day for planting seeds and seedlings.  For watering things that will grow, provide color, a place for butterflies, birds, bunnies, and a little tree frog.  This is a day to build cages around new growth, allowing it every chance of survival. 

This is a day I will plant things that will nourish me through fall and winter.

I bought my dad a Martha Stewart Contour Pillow for his neck.  The hospital pillows and the pillows at the rehab center are like hard stones. 

On Friday I asked him, “Are those pillows uncomfortable for you dad?”

“Yes.”  He answered.

“Would you like me to bring you one more comfortable?” 

“That would be nice.”  He smiled.

After I finish planting, I will drop the pillow off to him.  I know his wife will go ballistic.  I cannot help that. 

I have not interfered with her relationship with my father.  She is his wife.   

Why is she interfering with my relationship with him?  I am his daughter. 

I cannot ponder questions that have no answers. 

But this “what if”?  It speaks of possibilities.

My tears water seedlings of change, of choice, of mindfulness this mourning.

Mourning.

Morning.

I’m about to come alive.

I can’t cry hard enough.

My life is brilliant this morning. 

Because I am going to spend the day living.

What if.

I love you baby girl.  My heart is full of you.

Mom

Mother's Day Morning 2011

Mother’s Day, 2011

Dear Andrea,

I am sitting here this morning by myself.  I woke at 7, rain whispering secrets outside my bedroom window.  The birds overheard and started gossiping.  I tried to understand what they were saying—the rain, the birds.  They speak a different language.  I decided I just loved to hear them gossip.  I laid there, warm beneath the down comforter, Sadie pressed against my side and listened with my eyes closed. 

Today is Mother’s Day.  Writing through my tears, I still cannot accept that you are dead.  I make myself say “Dead.”  I write it on a piece of white college lined paper in black ink a hundred times like a punishment.  It feels like one. 

I avoid saying “lost”, instead of dead.  “Lost my daughter” makes it feel like I was negligent.  Like maybe if I’d held your hand a little tighter you would not have wandered into the crowd and disappeared.  “Lost” feels like I could go to that place in the department store where they keep lost children and give them a lollipop and Kleenex until their parents can be found, and see you sitting there kicking your feet back and forth, knowing I would come for you.  “Lost” feels impermanent, like my sunglasses I keep losing and finding again.

Nobody wants to acknowledge death.  Even as it sits across the breakfast table silently watching as we make our first cup of coffee for the day.  I try to ignore it.  But it is always there.  Yours, my grandmothers’, my grandfathers’, my mother’s, mine.

Death nods to grief.  I feel grief now, though I cannot see it.  No one can.  It follows me everywhere.  It sits in me like too many bags of groceries carried from the car to house at one time.  I cannot unload it.  It wraps itself around my wrists and twists.  It puts pressure on my legs and wears down the cartilage in my knees.  It pulls my back away from my spine between my shoulder blades. My chest is caving in on itself.  My breasts feel full, as if responding to a baby’s cry.

There is no escape. I grab a cup of coffee.  I wish I had a cigarette, but I don’t smoke.

I acknowledge death and grief this mother’s morning.  This is our morning. 

I bring your white scuffed baby shoes, the blue plaque that reads “Miss Andrea Ortiz Peterson; Able Seaman (Watch)”, I bring the picture of you and your sister and I at her wedding where I am smiling and you both are laughing, photo albums filled with pictures on beaches, living rooms, dining room tables, and the book I Am Running Away Today  you gave me when I took you to SeaTac to catch a plane to Ecuador when you were 16 and off to be an exchange student.  I find the pearls Scott bought you when your ship docked in Shanghai.  I put them on.  I find a black t-shirt with a pirate face and the words, “Worst Pirate Ever”.  I wear it and nothing else but panties and a pair of pirate socks.  I tie my hair back with your black scarf with white pirate faces appearing like polka dots. 

I am rocked by the truth in this.  Shaken.  If seismologists could measure it, I’m sure this would be a 9.7.  Everything is leveled. Lost.

Death nods at me.  Shows momentary sympathy.  It is just the way things are for everything living.  I don’t have to accept it.  But it is. 

I allow the tears to fall like rain.  The birds are no longer gossiping.  They are simply singing.

Annalise is being blessed today.  I must go get dressed now. 

                                                                                            I love you, Mom.