Mother's And Other's Day

This is what I was greeted with when I woke up today.  I mean, apart from the fact that I told her to smile and she came up with something that reminds me of a constipated cow, the card and the sentiment were gorgeous.

But Mother's Day is kind of weird around here sometimes.

May isn't my favourite month.  Mum's birthday on the 17th.  Mother's Day is somewhere around the second week.  And then there's the 30th.

May 30th is the fifth anniversary of my Mum's death.

While I'm celebrating with my own kids - and don't get me wrong, I'm insanely grateful that I have that - I've also got this thing just sitting over my shoulder.  She's not here.  She would have turned 60 this month, and we would have given her something ridiculous and vaguely insulting, like a hamper filled with digestive biscuits, black hair dye, Metamucil, bladder control products and denture adhesive.  And she would have chased us around the house, threatening to tan our hides while at the same time giggling uncontrollably under her breath.  She was a top chick, my mother.

She drove me crazy at times, I'll freely admit that.  For the majority of my teen years our family car was an old, noisy, mustard / baby poop-coloured Landcruiser with a tiny cab, only just big enough for three, thigh-to-thigh, with me in the middle.  Whenever Mum thought Dad had applied the brake a wee bit late, you felt her foot push into the cab floor on the passenger side and a surprised little gasp escape her lips.  Even if he was going 10 miles an hour.  And she dangled her keys off her pinky finger everywhere she went instead of putting them inside her bag, like she was playing bells to announce her arrival.  Who does that?

But she also introduced me to Anne and Gilbert, Eliza and Darcy, Eleanor and Edward, which started off an intense love for period drama that continues to this day (and is being brainwashed passed down to my daughter as we speak).  She was quietly crafty and a fabulous knitter.  She cooked like a true country housewife (later in her life she was a cook on a cattle station in outback Western Australia, which gives you a good indication of the type of meals she loved to make).  And she put everyone else first, which in hindsight wasn't the best strategy really - she passed away from a heart attack due to obesity and other health factors.  None of us gave her enough credit while she was alive, and its only with the benefit of my own experience as a mother that I finally 'get' her, which is horribly sad.  I continue to miss her.

Today had a separate element of crapness as well.  The Bearded Avenger's cousin was due to celebrate her first Mother's Day this year but went into early labour just before Christmas and lost her twins - a boy and a girl - at 18 weeks.  She's having a horrible time.  I don't know how you recover from something like that.  I was virtually pregnant the moment TBA raised his eyebrows at me in a suggestive fashion, and twice more in quick succession, so infertility and pregnancy loss is a bit of a distant pain I'm not personally familiar with.  But as a woman, I can imagine.  I can imagine - and imagining isn't the same as wishing for - losing Eldest, Middle or Youngest and my heart breaking and never being made whole again, so I think it might be a little like that.

And so today, as I miss my mother and others miss theirs, my thoughts are also with the women who desperately want to be mothers but can't, and the women who were mothers in reality before and will remain mothers in their hearts forever.

Update, Monday 9th ~ The best news came in today.  TBA's cousin is pregnant again.  So happy her sad Mother's Day was also filled with joy :)

Huge hugs.