Reflections on a Mother's Day

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. So here’s my Mother’s Day present: the kids are coming for supper. Or, I should say, four of the five of them are coming. Theo has gone for a long-promised weekend to his buddy’s cottage (Sorry, Nana, he said to me on the phone). But it’s OK. I love him and know that he loves me back. That is really what all this is about. It’s about love. Since we have returned to Toronto in early May we have yet to have all five progeny together here as both of my daughters now live out of Toronto. Catherine with Theo and Emily had Sunday lunch once on our off-the-kitchen deck on a singularly lovely day last month. Elizabeth is here weekly to see clients; she and I regularly have Wednesday night supper and a talk at one of our many local eateries while Billie attends her hip-hop class. Billie is staying with us for the weekend as Elizabeth takes off for parts unknown with her coterie of mother pals – a yearly festival of celebration and reprieve. But she will return tomorrow evening to join Catherine, Emily, Billie, Mark and myself to collectively bask in the glory and rewards of motherhood. More generally, of course, these are the rewards of family, by no means easily come by.

My own family has not been close. An astute observer said as much to my sister on the occasion of my mother’s 90^th birthday party, held at Linda and Darcy’s home in Etobicoke. As adults the four of us basically went along our own paths, connecting at prescribed events held at my parent’s place – perhaps once or twice a year. Valerie lived in Ottawa raising her daughter Tracey away from the mother with whom she chronically feuded. Craig had an involvement with Linda’s family, sometimes going to her place for dinner and amusing her four kids with his dry wit. He and I would go for a walk once in a while and talk about our past and our parents, sharing a perspective not understood by Linda, long our mother’s ally and our dad’s clear favourite. The things that I did, the way that I lived my life, and the choices that I made were at such angles to my mother’s views of a proper way of being that I was generally considered “weird” not just by her but by Linda’s kids as well. My discomfort in the bosom of the family was such that for many years I maintained the absolute minimum of contact, and at no time encouraged an involvement of my daughters with their grandparents.

None of the above is happy stuff. We have all suffered from the connections that we missed among ourselves. In the past several years as my mother’s health failed, Linda, Craig, and I met periodically and talked more openly about family dynamics. “Where was I?” Linda said on several occasions as Craig and I recounted some of our ancient stories. Her experiences with our parents was so vastly different from our own that we might have lived in different families. It was a great shock to her when our mother turned against her in the last few years of her life, berating her undeservedly. Craig and I openly expressed our satisfaction to Linda that she was experiencing the venom that we had described but which had never before come her way. At last she got it! But again, I have to underscore that all this is unhappy stuff. My poor old mother had to have good guys and bad guys within the orbit of her day-to-day existence, people she could smile upon and expect the best from and others upon whom she could frown and find fault. Her children and even her grandchildren found themselves divided by these “fault” lines and suffered the undeserved consequences accordingly.

As individuals we, Mary’s children, have found our own ways in the world. Valerie prospered in her own interesting and idiosyncratic manner in Ottawa, raising her daughter (whom we know and love), but succumbing to cancer some years ago. Craig is shortly to retire from teaching humanities at a community college, looking forward to spending more time with his terrific companion, Dale. Linda has woven a close and loving family within the context of Darcy’s circle of siblings and of their many friends and connections. The miracle of the love among my kids and theirs and Mark and me is the absolute greatest, most valued component of my long life. So many challenges, so many difficult times to struggle through and to understand, so very much under that proverbial bridge, but here we are, really happy to be so solidly in one another’s lives. My girls have their own challenges as do their neophyte children but I see how well placed all of them are to move ahead, secure in the knowledge that they are loved, accepted, and supported. What greater joy, what greater gift can there be for a grandmother on Mother’s Day?