mother's day

Noticing my level of neutrality about this holiday, now almost 21 years after my mother's death. I think of her gently, I guess, maybe even peacefully. For years, I grieved for her in unexpected sudden waves that would strike suddenly, bring me to my knees, but I haven't had one of those in a long time.

I have so many years of being a mother myself by now that the holiday has taken on that cast - although Laura and I do not have a big tradition about it. We seem to resist big traditions, which I note can turn into big obligations, burdens, and guilt trips. Better not to go there. We make it up year by year. We change. We want different things. We are tied in with each other, but loosely, somehow. This seems like a good thing. I want her tied in, but I want her to feel her freedom growing. I see her growing, see how I need to prepare her for more and more freedom. It's an awkward and uneven process. She messed up using the CTA card at the El station yesterday - she wasn't paying attention. "Read what it says," I was testy. Oh well. A small thing, a tiny learning - you have to pay attention to the readout on the turnstile. A person who goes on the CTA independently needs to know that very small thing, and now she does. Someday soon she will go on the El by herself. And either she will, or she won't, pay attention to what she's doing, and she may keep herself safe, or she may learn something else, maybe hard, maybe easy.

She's not a little girl in a bubble of rules, padding and safety straps, adult supervision. She is starting to get around on her own.

Happy mother's day to me.