On Mother’s Day

This project had a simple beginning. I was forty-five when I invited my seventy-year-old mother to explore our different memories of our shared experiences. I engaged an author-poet-friend memoir coach to get us going. I envisioned a handful of pages and discovered anecdotes that might make for a nifty Christmas compilation the following year.

Nine years later we published Choosing Ourselves. The project has generated lots of reactions, including from mothers of all ages who see reflections of their own challenging experiences having a child with a birth defect or dealing with any sort of ‘non-normalness’. From my vantage point as the child in my mother’s parenting experience, the reactions seem rooted in a deeper shadow.

This project allowed me to become aware of how this shadow grew in my mother. She wrestled with doubts about how she managed her pregnancy, whether she was worthy to be a mother at all, how she parented both the every-boy and the clefted child, how to claim her agency with a medical system that wanted her to stay silent, on and on. Actually, a whole book’s worth of doubts and memories.

But perhaps what haunted her most, and what I hear in the reactions of other mothers today, were her concerns about how her decisions along the way might impact my life beyond just having the cleft. She navigated her concerns as best she could. And that’s really all that any of us can do, as parents or in anything – lean in and try our best in the hardest moments even when we don’t know what comes next. There are countless cliche quotes and sayings I could pop into a callout box, but this is the truth of it – when it gets hard, make a decision to show up and just follow your gut and your heart.

This is what my mom did for me. I think she still abides traces of shadows in her memories, but what parent doesn’t? I turned out alright. As a kid, I sensed my mom was showing up. As a teenager I became more aware of my parents, but still didn’t appreciate their efforts, but what teenager does? As an adult, and a parent now myself, I can look back and understand the origins of her shadows, as well as my own, without being overwhelmed by them.

This simple project gifted me a profound appreciation for all she did that shaped who I am and how I act today. In our book, I try to honor her efforts in the poem On Anger and I hope you can hear it threaded through other poems too.

Also on this day, I recognize that not everyone has the opportunity for conversations with their parents. I have friends who lost their parents at a young age, or never knew them or are estranged and don’t care to know them now. I have friends who have lost their children and continue to live and they are some of the strongest people I know. I am humbled and grateful to even have had an chance for such a conversation with my parents. I hold this gratitude gently and reverently.

(image: Eleven-month old Jimmy with Barbara)