Stained Notebooks

I’m sitting at my desk in my bedroom.  Feeling contemplative after talking with children who can’t be with their mother who is dying in a facility, and looking at graduation pictures of other children I used to watch play on the floor.

The notebooks I use for work sit quietly by.  Some are used up and some are brand new.  Side by side, I notice the difference between them.  The used ones seem to have thicker pages, wrinkles, rips, and coffee stains.  The new ones are crisp.  Simply blank and available for use, having no more of an idea what will fill their pages than I do.

I imagine what each of our books looks like.  Not a bunch of little books with lots of names.  But, a big book with only one name.  Yours.  Mine.

I purchased the printed version of this blog last November.  It is printed on 8.5 x 11 paper, weighs about seven pounds, and is over an inch thick.  When it arrived, I marveled at its substance.  Did writing periodically over seven years really amount to something that I could hold?  Something that would feel heavy in my hands?  

Can you imagine if the story of each one of our lives were actually written down on paper?  The number and weight of the pages?  

In the physical life, they are written in our bodies, our hearts, and on our faces.  Grandma Bert is the perfect example, and my favorite, as well.

Her birthday was May 16th.  She would have been a spicy 93.  Her story was written on her face.  Her beautiful face.  Her lack of education and finances, her abusive husband, a murdered sister, losing three of her five sons to traumatic deaths, including the Vietnam War, and all of the long years in between.  And she smiled in spite of it all.  Man, I love (and miss) her.  

I imagine the weight of her book, containing all of the stuff of her 86 years.  I would love to read it in its entirety.  

Actually, I would rather she read it to me.  

I believe she is in Heaven and I hope to see her again there one day.  Should that happen, I may ask her.  But, maybe it isn’t as important there as it is here.  Or maybe it is.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them...     Psalm 139:16

To All the Moms With Empty Birdfeeders

It’s Mother’s Day.  This day feels a little like Christmas to me, because it is a celebration of one of my most-prized roles and my greatest contribution to the world - my three sons.

But, as is often the case, when my joy surges, I remember that the same causes for my joy are sources of pain and sadness for others.  And I need to acknowledgement that.

I recently did a “window visit” to a woman in a nursing home, per ongoing COVID-19 visiting restrictions.  She is and has been many things, but is most often identified as a hospice patient and a mother.  As I knelt down by her window A/C unit and her empty bird feeder, we conversed about how we got here, how we didn’t all start out trying to live into the 100’s, how she would gladly give what time she has to someone else, how no one will touch her, and how she has to manage her expectations of her children so she’s not perpetually disappointed, and subsequently heartbroken.

Motherhood.  The source of the greatest joy and greatest pain.

For all mothers whose pain outweighs or comes in equal measure with your joys, this is for you.
 
If Mother’s Day is something to be endured rather than enjoyed, this is for you.
If you always wanted children, but were never able to conceive, this is for you.
If your children lived only long enough to catch a glimpse on an ultrasound, this is for you.
If you carried your child to term, and they went to heaven before you got them home, this is for you.
If your children got a “head start” in the life beyond and left you behind, this is for you.
If your children blame you for everything, this is for you.
If your children struggle with depression or addiction, this is for you.
If you’re a grandmother raising your grandchildren, this is for you.
If you’re waiting for your children to visit and your bird feeder is empty, this is for you.

Mothers are people who make room for others.  Very often within our very own bodies, but very often in other ways, too.  Children can come to us in many ways, and sometimes, it is through the front door.  After all, I am often visiting someone else’s mother while someone else is visiting mine.

Thank you to all of you who have sacrificed your own bodies, preferences, comforts, safety, and living for yourselves, so that others may have life.   Happy Mother’s Day!