Some mothers' day

In the past two years, I have been surrounded by mothers, in their kitchens or on dining tables—being fed or planning a wedding or doing make-up on their daughters for prom or regaining my equilibrium after a bad migraine from a long, horrible day at work.

I’ve been offered remedies for everything—the number of a good therapist, a patchwork chicken that watches over my apartment with the promise of its partner in crime: a blind camouflage-clad pig, a bowlful of indian mangoes, virgin coconut oil and an incredible amount of baked goods and good food (and even weed.)

They’ve lent me their children to carry as we talked, or as shoulders for me to lean on as i caught up with sleep or bemoaned adulthood, or as faces for me to work on or for the most part, as my best friends. I’m lucky that way.

Last year, I just ignored Mother’s Day. But this year, I wasn’t allowed to. What I do for a living means I had to write multiple versions of Happy Mother’s Day. Funny, right? It really wasn’t bad until it was.

Overtime at work. In front of my laptop. Tears streaming down my face (to my officemates’ chagrin.) Trying to capture everything in 105 characters (needed space for a photo and a hashtag.) Comedy gold. Especially when I tell you that i really wasn’t thinking of my mom. I really was just trying to revise copy.

And though revisions sometimes do make me want to do a full backbend tantrum on the floor or a snot-filled ugly keening, this was just my body expressing its grief. Something that seems as banal as sweating. Except I know that the tears are always just beneath because mama died; they are always just at the rim.

Most wounds do heal—even the ones that shatter you completely, the ones you have to learn a new way to breathe after. But maybe that mothers dying is a part of the natural order of things, this you don’t really heal from. Trauma makes you burrrow, it makes you close in—the way muscles around a bad cut tense up and stiffen to protect the area from getting hurt again. But grief? This softens you, it makes you open up. Because it is from this that the kindness comes, it is from this that the love springs.

To my friends and family who have had me at their tables or on their sofas or in their cars—Happy Mother’s Day! Thank you for taking care of me. There are few loves greater. Kiss your mothers for me,too—that I love you all so much means that I do love them too.

And to my mom, who even without trying has made it impossible for me to truly become cynical—how can I ever think that I can be ever world-weary if a 30-seconder for a milk that i don’t even drink can make me cry, every single time? Grief should really make you harder, impenetrable—that sounds like a logical evolutionary purpose. But it doesn’t, it renders you always vulnerable, always open. That sounds like a way to live.