(Written on Mother's Day several years ago.)
Perhaps today I'm feeling tender. Sensitive.
I notice a tendency to tear up as I see and hear messages of mothers and their children on this Mother's Day.
I remember as a young girl how grateful I was to have a mother.
I knew even at a young age that my mother's mother had died when my mom was quite young. After a few years, Lily, the woman I knew as Grandma joined our family. As the story goes, on the day my grandparents married and returned to their home at the orange orchard in a small town of Ventura County, California, the little girl who grew up to become my mom, said, "We got us a mudder now." She was four.
I think about Lily. She is with me often. She was mother to two beautiful daughters, not because she gave birth to them, rather because she chose to marry into their family. Never was there a question: she was mother, grandma. (no step- prefixes were EVER used, none that I ever heard.)
Still I grew up knowing that my mother had experienced the impossible to fathom experience of her own mother's death.
Perhaps today I'm feeling tender. Sensitive.
I notice a tendency to tear up as I see and hear messages of mothers and their children on this Mother's Day.
I remember as a young girl how grateful I was to have a mother.
I knew even at a young age that my mother's mother had died when my mom was quite young. After a few years, Lily, the woman I knew as Grandma joined our family. As the story goes, on the day my grandparents married and returned to their home at the orange orchard in a small town of Ventura County, California, the little girl who grew up to become my mom, said, "We got us a mudder now." She was four.
I think about Lily. She is with me often. She was mother to two beautiful daughters, not because she gave birth to them, rather because she chose to marry into their family. Never was there a question: she was mother, grandma. (no step- prefixes were EVER used, none that I ever heard.)
Still I grew up knowing that my mother had experienced the impossible to fathom experience of her own mother's death.