Thursday, April 01, 2004

• You know that expression, "the glue that holds (blank) together?"   I would have never thought so when she was alive, but my mother (like many mothers) was our family's glue.   Not that there was that much to hold together and not that there weren't places where the seal was a little bit broken.   By the time my mom died, our family was a mess. But still, she was the one we revolved around. Without going into how completely screwed up and broken she was, after she died, I think it was apparent to those of us who were left how little we knew each other. My mom was the intercessor. If we wanted something from someone else, or wanted to tell them something, we went through my mom. She brokered countless deals of all kinds. She was good at it.   I can't say why it was like this. I guess because she had each person believing what she wanted them to believe, and it was best for her and her house of cards if we kept our contact with each other to a minimum. Without her, we've pretty much gone our own ways. I'm the glue for my own family now, and at the advice of my best pal, have stopped looking for a mother figure and decided to become one (I didn't have kids in some bizarre bid to replace my mother; I just decided years ago to stop wishing my mom was here and start being to my kids what I wish she'd been to me) .   I read an essay by Anne Lamott the other day while I was getting my hair colored. It was in O magazine (is it O Magazine, O Magazine, just O, or O, The Oprah Magazine? No matter.), an issue from last year about age and aging. The essay was about her being in her late 40s, and how by that time many of us have settled into our own skin and feel comfortable. She talked about how she'd had all these boyfriends and devastating breakups followed by periods of intense loneliness. She said that somewhere along the way, she stopped looking outside of herself and decided to become the person she wanted to meet.   I'm not explaining it very well, but it was a lovely essay, and I could totally relate. I've become the mother I wish I had. It hasn't fixed everything, but it's gone a long way toward making me feel whole and normal (incidentally, things I never felt when she actually was alive).   My mom's absence is weighing heavily on me as I prepare to go to my sister's wedding.  It's been a long time, so it's not like this is a fresh wound. Maybe it's because it's a wedding, maybe it's because my kids are growing up so fast, maybe it's because I'm only three years younger than my mom was when she died.    I guess all I can do is honor it, and her. Our family's general practice is to just pretend she never existed, and I'm not going to do that this time. I'm going to acknowledge, if only to myself, that this is something she would never have wanted to miss.  She would be so happy to be at my sister's wedding. I can just picture her there, all smiles, head high.   My mom was the glue that held our family together. Crazy Glue, for sure, but glue nonetheless. It doesn't feel right without her, and that's OK.

  • 10:22 AM
  • 1 view
  • 38 eprops
  • 20 comments