(or, why I am not a fan of this holiday)

For the first time in my 43 years on this planet, I forgot to call my Mom on Mother’s Day. I AM A TERRIBLE PERSON. Or, maybe not so much.

Look – Sundays are BUSY for me, okay? I woke up, tended to dear daughter and her sleepover buddy, argued with DH about whether or not it was worth going out for breakfast (he is not a fan of breakfast food; I mos def am but I think it’s a waste if there’s no good coffee to be had AND TRUST AND BELIEVE THERE IS NO GOOD COFFEE TO BE HAD IN MY TOWN – at least at breakfast places), ate the breakfast he ultimately made me instead, grocery shopped for the week, meal prepped for the week, did a few loads of laundry, ran other errands, you get the picture. “I should really stop and call Mom” did in fact cross my mind a couple of times, but then it would be promptly erased by the next “to-do”. By the time I remembered, it was 10 o’clock. I was mortified and guilt ridden. Obviously. Right?

Well, kind of. For some time now, thanks to many factors but especially it seems social media, I have not looked forward to this day. My family always makes me feel special but there are things they cannot control that make me feel like shit and/or riddled with anxiety: namely the fact that MD always falls on a fucking SUNDAY which all moms know is the woooooooorst day of the week. Just the worst! From sun up to long after sun down, I do not stop on Sundays. Day of rest, my ass. And then there’s the blessing-curse of social media. Every year, starting somewhere around a week or so prior to MD, people on my Facebook feed start changing their profile pictures to a darling, vintage photo of their mom. And the tributes begin. I do not change my photo. I love my mom, but we are at our best when we are at a great physical distance. We have what is best described as a complicated relationship. I started to realize that something was “wrong” between us when I was 29. I was out with some friends and somehow the topic turned to moms, and their relationship with their moms. As I listened to each girl talk about how imperfect, yet healthy and loving, their relationships were – it was if a light turned on over my head. My relationship with my own mother sounded nothing like theirs. Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t a “Mommy Dearest” type situation or anything close to it. But it was not healthy, not stable, and – as I was about to discover – not normal.

I can and likely will go into more detail about this dysfunctional relationship between Mom and I in a future post. But for now, suffice to say that the nurturing gene did not seem to exist in Mom. She cared for me in the physical sense, but emotionally there was pretty much nothing there. Just…empty. Some experts in Adoption Land believe this can happen when a child does not share the womb connection with the mother. There is actually a term for it: “the primal wound” is what occurs when a child is separated from the biological mother. I’m not sure I believe that. But is my mom disconnected from me (and eventually, I from her) because she didn’t grow me inside her body? Or is it because, for whatever other random reasons, she just didn’t connect? For example, there’s a lot of sadness and trauma in her background. Did this contribute to the kind of mother she became? Surely, that has to be part of it. The whole “nature vs. nurture” argument will forever confound me. Because then, I have the other side of the coin. My biological mother, whose connection was “cut” with me. While I am in reunion with her, I would not say overall that the relationship has been a positive experience. The rest of the bio family is amazing and wonderful, and I am grateful every day for their presence in my life and our reunion. So I let a lot of stuff slide with S. because I have so much good with the rest of the bio fam. In some ways, I consider it a very small price to pay.

So on Mother’s Day…it’s hard for me to spend a lot of time dwelling on the two mothers I have, neither of which meets my ideal. In the past, what I have done is focused instead on memories of my grandmothers and three friends who “taught” me how to be a mom at the most critical time of my life, as a new mom whose husband was deployed for most of the pregnancy and the first six weeks of our son’s life. Of course, I also focus on my own little family and my kids. And mostly stay the hell off social media.

But, as with most holidays for me…there’s some hurt that always shows up. We don’t have any family close by, so nearly every holiday is spent with just the four of us. It’s less chaotic and dramatic for sure, but it’s also sad. I always feel empty somehow. Here’s a classic conundrum for Adoptees: we are never satisfied. In my perfect world, I would live in the same town with all of my extended family: adoptive, bio, in laws. But I’m not sure that is normal. Nobody else seems to feel this way. Except, of course, adoptees. For us, family isn’t everything. It is the only thing.

“Through the storm, we reach the shore
You gave it all but I want more
And I’m waiting for you

With or without you
With or without you
I can’t live with or without you.” – U2

PS: I called the next day and had flowers delivered. All was well. Unbeknownst to me, my brother had also forgotten to call and so his flowers arrived within 45 minutes of mine. LOL. (if we can’t laugh at ourselves, we’d cry ourselves to death)