Gratitude for My Mom...

How fitting that we wrap up 30 days of gratitude on my mom’s birthday!  She turns 80 today!  She really doesn’t look a day over 65.  As usual, we have been celebrating all week.  Having our birthdays 4 days apart has kind of lent itself to having Thanksgiving weekend be about us for decades.  And today, it will be all about her!  

I do not know where I would be in this life without my mom.  She has been that stable, grounding force in my life.  She has pretty much always been my best friend, confidant, person I most enjoy spending time with and a person who has never, ever let me down.  I have always been able to count on her, and hopefully, I have done a decent job of providing that for her as well as our roles change and alter with the passage of time.

I love her quiet countenance, grace and humor.  There is no one on this earth, save my daughter, who can make me laugh over absolutely nothing at all, for an hour.  We have literally made complete asses out of ourselves, laughing like hyenas over something that only we think is funny.  It is one the best feelings I have ever known.

I am grateful to have this positive mother/daughter bond to pass along to my daughter.  This is not to say my mom and I have never quarreled or been upset with each other...but that those times have been super limited and we have always found the language to work through whatever we have needed to.

She possess this quiet, unassuming knowledge of life:  its workings, herself, recovery, Buddhism, knitting, reading, investing, cooking, writing, meditating.  I mean she has other interests, but those have been the constants.  She actually hates cooking now, and I almost left it off the list, but she is the one who taught me to cook and I have so many fond memories of us cooking together, I couldn’t leave it out.  Now, neither of us really cooks anymore which is just fine.

I am grateful she gave me a legacy of a loving, positive female relationship.  She gave me the knowledge and experience of what it is to be a good mother.  We are very much alike in many ways, and in just as many ways, we are completely opposite.  But I think, we have been able to appreciate the things about the other that differ, and instead of a source of conflict, we have turned those things into things we admire about the other.  Her leading the way in this area, of course.

I do not know who I would be without her.  All the things she gave up to have me, all the things she didn’t get to do in her life because she chose, again and again, to be my mom.  The careers she didn’t have.  The trips she didn’t take.  The things she didn’t get to do because she made a choice to become my mom at a time when that choice often was the exclusion of many other choices.

She was able to hold her center, and forge a career alongside motherhood and I am so grateful for her example.  She showing me that it is possible to have both, I mean, there is a cost but it can be paid and a woman can have both.

And even with her career and working, she was always there for me.  I do not ever remember a time when she got home and did not give me her time and attention.  When she picked her over me.  She capable of commitment and sticktoitiveness that I have found much harder to come by.  She being ruled by obligation, duty and her role.  Which allowed me the luxury of making a few different choices when my time came.

She is the best example of motherhood I have ever seen.  And I am forever in her debt for this experience.  So many of my friends have hard and brittle relationships with their mothers.  So many of my friends have lost their moms to alcoholism and addiction.  So on this most esteemable day, I know how very lucky I am to have her in my life.

She has been my moral compass, when my own has foundered.  She doing the right thing for the right reason, always.  I have never known her to take shortcuts, steal, or even lie.  I am not sure how she does it, but she has, for decades.

I do not think I will ever be as good a person as her, but even this fact, is a providence she has granted me.  Her goodness, her ability to show up no matter what, granted me the ability to be a little less reliable and stable.  When you have a mom like her, a guiding, loving force for good in your life, even when you find yourself way off course, she is like a beacon in the fog, gently guiding you back to safe harbor.

We are two very different people.  Sometimes I think I am the negative to her photo.  Me always darker and shadier than her.  And even as I write that, I know she has her struggles too.  Her own darkness and pain that I know she shields from me to a large degree, finding other outlets for her loss and pain.  I know she knows she can come to me with anything, but the fact she doesn’t, preserves that mother/child relationship, even as we are both grown women.

I would not be who I am today without her.  And I am so very happy to celebrate her today!  A big milestone birthday, a lovely, life affirming trip to Big Sur together and tonight dinner at the Ojai Valley Inn.  A perfect week to celebrate the woman that gave me life, provided me an example of a strong female presence and what unconditional love looks like day after day.

Motherhood is not easy and demands simply your soul.  And she has offered up her life, her body, her mind, her labor, her money, her free time and her soul to give me the life I have today.  I would be so much less without her loving, guiding force in my life.  Gratitude doesn’t even feel like the right word.  I feel this deep well of love, unadulterated love for her and know that as much as I feel, she reflects that back on me and my family one hundred fold.

Happy 80th birthday, mom!  I love you with all that I am!  Thank you for being my mom, my best friend and my greatest teacher.  

Again, still...always.

I am grateful for

My mom being born today

Time with Diane yesterday

A lovely Friendsgiving at Nancy’s house

Grace being safe

Logan calling

Being able to receive the answer, no, from the universe even though I want a different answer

Therapy next week

Dinner at the Inn for my mom’s birthday

Waking early

Home group today

Living in Ojai

My home