On Mothering, with and without children.

Mother’s Day is always an interesting time for me. I never quite got it as a kid, because as I understood it, I should be nice to mom all the time, what was with the special day? (Of course, looking back on my teens and twenties I’m considering that my mother probably deserves an entire week.) Once I became a mom I still didn’t see the need. My kid is the best gift of my life, every single day. Additional presents or recognition are superfluous. In fact, I am dreading his upcoming preschool program for Mother’s Day, because selfishly, I don’t really see the “treat” in being asked to sit on a bleacher for an hour and a half with a child who has at best a fifteen minute attention span and who knows that this is the one place where mom can’t give him time out. If we make it through the morning without one of us ending up cowering under the bleachers I will consider it a success.

It is interesting to think now that the time I believe I most appreciated Mother’s Day was when I was a childless, single adult. Since I had no children of my own and my own mom was far away, I started thinking about what “mothering” meant. My own expectations for a family had pretty well died off in my early thirties and I had several friends that had lost or were losing their mothers to rotten diseases much too soon. One of these women I referred to as my “musical mom” as she had shepherded me through my entire musical education, encouraging my every effort, nearly since I was born. We lost her the spring I made it to the regional finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and to this day I believe some part of my ambition died with her. I know that when someone inspirational dies you are supposed to fight on even harder in honor of their memory, but sometimes they are more than inspirational. They are your rock, they are that source of energy you tap when all of your own is gone. In short, they are your mom. You find a way to continue, but the way will never be the same as before.

Motherhood is not about giving birth to a biological child. While that is a tremendous gift for which I am truly thankful, motherhood is more than that. Someone can give birth to a child and never be a mother, while another person can live childless their whole lives and yet have dozens of children. I might even go so far to say that it is not exclusive to women. True motherhood means unconditional love coupled with high expectations, mentoring combined with nurturing and the ability to imprint a part of one’s soul on another person. I also believe that for those of us who are mothers of the heart, our children can come from our bodies, from another biological family, from our classrooms or even in the form of our animal friends or the art that we create.

Being a mother is not about who loves me, but who I love.

It is this thought that recurs as I pack up the baby things, finally knowing this is the end, there will be no more children beyond my one ridiculously amazing gift of a child. There is still grief and loss, but I have tried to remember that time in my thirties when I realized that mothering was not a biological function. I will still have many more children, but they will not come from my body, they will come from my heart, my mind and my teaching. And that will be enough. It will be more than enough.