Magical Creature Lessons #13
This past weekend I hung out with The Magical Creatures while Mommy traveled for work. She was only gone a couple of days and left us (me & Daddy) three pages of instructions to keep All. The. Things. on schedule and running smoothly in her absence.
And they did. We completely nailed it. Except — as much as we are loved by The Magical Creatures — we were not Mommy.
There were more than a few moments when one of them would turn to me with tears shining in her eyes. As I held her we both knew — she was missing Mommy.
And nothing short of Mommy walking in the front door was going to make Life better.
My daughter arrived home late Saturday night. Well past bedtime, however, the two oldest Magical Creatures managed to stay awake long enough to say goodnight. They both fell into a deep sleep — relaxing into the fact that their world was, again, complete.
For those of us who no longer have a Mommy, or perhaps those of us whose Mommy should never have been promoted to a position they were ill-equipped to manage — learning how to mother ourselves has been Our Life’s Work.
Caring for ourselves is often beyond our ability.
We eat wrong. We don’t tuck ourselves in. We make bad decisions about friends and lovers. We don’t take the advice we would give to our own daughters. We don’t trust that we have the ability to self-soothe.
Beyond that, our hearts physically hurt when we hear our friends converse about the mothers they still have.
Because deep down — we know — every woman needs a mother. For some of us, the road to becoming the woman we needed our whole lives is what heals the vacuum. For others even reaching our full potential is a hollow victory without our mothers beside us to share the accomplishment.
After my mother died, an aunt stepped in to make sure I was fed and kept me out of trouble by introducing me to horses. She showed me how to bake. She instilled within me the miracle of growing a garden. She taught me how to crochet. She had moments of kindness and moments of disappointment towards me. But she was never my mother.
