People who know me and know my story, people who were my friends from a long time ago will know that I went through a lot of loss when I was twenty-five. I was held up by my family and safety net of friends and I somehow bumbled and muddled my wounded self along the timeline until my next chapter opened up.
Somewhere I got rerouted,and twirled like a top into a new life. I had not done anything remarkable, except be alive and hopeful and all the other things that are in my personality. But really, if I were the person on the bus talking to a friend about the poor thing I was, the listener would have shaken her head and said, “I really hope things turn out right for that girl.”
I was a mess. A tragic person. A poor sweet thing. But…..I had a core of resilience and a bit of faith to lean on.
So I leaned and cried and laughed and listened and cooked a lot and danced a lot and went with friends, and was the third wheel and was the one who couldn’t be left alone at home, and all that. I couldn’t think, couldn’t plan beyond payday, couldn’t have an ambition. I was lost and grieving but holding it together. Time passed and my friends graduated and moved into their new lives. I learned how to be alone.
In 1984 I decided to move to Boston. Partly for romantic reasons, partly because I had already lived in New York and Philadelphia, so a new East Coast city would be a change. Things fell into place, I got the right job to alleviate the worry of my parents, and headed into the unknown with trash bags in a U-Haul and $300.00. Around the corner was an unexpected wedding and a baby.
Becoming a mother was my personal Annunciation. God spoke to me through circumstance.
Things fell into place.All the trouble, sadness and loss receded, and I had this time of abundance. I had a miraculous time of peace and plenty and security in the upstairs apartment of a lovely home off of Brattle Street. Our landlady was heaven-sent. She would invite me for tea every week with her two Irish housekeepers, and we would share a little time with a cup of tea and some sweet piece of bread and jam.
For a few months I looked out the window at the maple trees and slept. I listened to the birds and looked at the green out the windows. For the first time in my American life I didn’t have to work. What a happy relief that was. What a vacation. I loved it!
And when my husband came home from work he would cook me beautifully thought up creative meals and we would take walks while we could – through the splendor that is autumn in Cambridge.
Then winter came and the time to give birth lingered on the threshold of spring. Then we were that young couple in a frenzied hurry going to Brigham and Women’s.
There was a moment, when my little daughter was laid on my chest, that I looked up and saw my husband’s face, glasses fogged and weeping with joy.
But the thing I remember looking back are those moments of rare transcendence, of inner vision that I experienced during the quiet first years of parenthood.
Once, I was walking the baby down the street and I passed an old Anglican convent. I’m not sure that it still is there. But I stood there in the afternoon light looking at the plaque of Mary and the Baby and was filled with exaltation. Thank you was not enough.
Then there was the time that the two little kids were watching Winnie the Pooh on television and at the end there was a shot of Christopher Robin sitting under a tree at sundown. That moment filled me with joy – huge buckets of joy were zinging around the room and filling the entire space.
Another time Mercy, talking and running bounced on the bed next to her brother JM and shouted, “I want us to have a whole pile of babies!!” And we started laughing, just us – in the bedroom with our small children.
We had a lot of children. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I had them in an era when people didn’t have big families anymore, so the world was retrofitted for small families. Tables for four, cars for five, family passes for four, kids eat free for two under twelve.
There were hard times…flu epidemics that hit at once, lean times, more impossible losses, but the thread that hummed the background music was always the children and all the love.
So I started with one life, and ended up in an entirely different life. A little bit of faith and a little bit of hope can be life changing. Happy Mother’s Day. I wish everyone all the chocolate, Kindles, and flowers they want.
On Mother’s Day, I will be sitting next to my husband at the university watching our fourth child graduate.
Happy Mother’s Day to everyone, for we all came from mothers. And Happy Mother’s Day to my mother, who survived World War II as a child and who is one of my closest friends in my life. God Bless us all and the fathers who made us mothers too. And all the mothers who nurtured us along the way, the teachers, the friends, the nice librarians, sisters, cousins, all the helping hands that we grab on to during life. Mother’s Day is the celebration of the feminine ability to nurture and protect. We all need our mamas – however they appear.
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