As Mother’s Day approaches, I’ve been thinking about how my understanding of my mother has changed over the years. The way we know our parents as children and the way we understand them as adults are fundamentally different states. The transition from seeing our mothers through the eyes of a child to those of a fellow grownup is a uniquely personal experience we all must navigate. These reflections on my mother parallel a broader theme I’ve been pondering lately: the life lessons I’ve learned that would be nearly impossible to convey to my younger self.
I don’t think I could have told younger Andy (let’s say, Andy in his 20s) about how important a good relationship with your spouse is when the truly hard times come. I couldn’t really explain to him the strange limitations you have in raising your children [We are not architects of these beings we created. We are just gardeners]. I also would struggle to make younger Andy understand that there will be different phases in his life, and he will want radically different things when those phases arise.
As we draw near to Mother’s Day, I’m thinking about how I don’t know if I could make younger Andy understand how much parents sacrifice for, and think about, their kids. Only by becoming a parent who has daughters that are now maintaining their own lives do I feel the deep desire to just know what is happening with them. Even when they were just a few years younger, I had so much more insight into who they were and what their days were like. Now, they can drive themselves and talk to their friends instead of me when they so choose.
Suddenly I want to hear much more about the mundane parts of my children’s day: who they talked to, what they learned, and how they thought and felt about the world they encountered. I think back on all the times my father told me to call my mom, and I thought “I don’t have anything to tell her!” Now I realize I had so many things to say that she would have cared about, but I just didn’t understand that.
I think that it’s the path of the young to be a bit self-involved and self-interested. As we grow and begin our lives away from home, we focus on what we are doing, and we don’t think that much about how our parents are invested in us or how much they care how we feel.
I wish I could explain to young people (including myself from the past) how parents worry, support, and celebrate their children’s smallest achievements even when those feelings go unsaid. But I’m not sure that such an understanding is truly possible.
Because some things are hard to explain, and because sending messages to ourselves in the past isn’t an option, I’m instead going to take this Mother’s Day as an opportunity to tell my mom how much she means to me, and to remind myself how easy it is to include her in my life. I think we learn a lot about our parents as we age ourselves, and it’s less important that we were perfect in the past than that we are using what we learn to be better in the future.
Mother’s Day is a time of gratitude for all that our moms have done for us and given to us. It’s an opportunity to reflect on all the times they have cared about us and wondered what we were up to. After we’ve done that, all we must do is say “thanks.” All we must do is act on our gratitude, and make the intentional steps required so that our relationship is what we want it to be.
Children don’t realize what they mean to mothers, and no mother is perfect. What matters is the relationship that we form in our time together and how we maintain it. I hope you will take some time today, if possible, to let your mom know what she meant to you in the past and what she means to you today.
Happy Mother’s Day to everyone who is a mother (and everyone who has one)!
