Why I Still Need My Mom

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mom_jess_weddingIt was 7:00 the morning of Emma’s First Communion, and I already had been up for two hours prepping for the intimate gathering sacramental bender for 65 people following the ceremony.

My mom arrived earlier in the week, and we had been prepping ever since. We sipped coffee as our eyes scanned the room, our list-making brains doing their thing.

“The succulents don’t look right in that planter – they aren’t raised up enough or something.” I mumbled quietly to myself. Or so I thought.

But in the time it took for me to park Phoebe in front of Frozen, my mother had abandoned her coffee and disappeared. I looked out the kitchen window and there she was, in my backyard wearing her nightgown and robe, gathering bricks from my garage. Sweet Jesus. She’s collecting bricks to raise up the succulents.

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My mom is a fixer, a do-er, a woman of action. She is also a listener – she hears your plight, and it becomes her mission to make it better.

When I was a teenager, I resented her fixing. I thought she was trying to fix me. I thought she was trying to make me better – when really she was just trying to make things better….for me.

Now I am a mother, and I see things from the other side. Mothers are helpers. We help our children into the world, and then we help them navigate their way through it. We help them to stand, use the bathroom, write their name, ride a bike….the list is endless. The helping is easy – it’s the not helping that’s hard. The world seems so big and scary; danger and disappointment around every corner. It all feels so huge and urgent.

This is the bitch of motherhood. While we wish we had a magic wand to make all things better for our kids, sometimes the trick is not to fix, but allow. To allow and make space for their sadness, their failures, their odd but passionate love for t-shirts featuring animals wearing bedazzled sunglasses.

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Some nights Emma cries when I tuck her in. She misses her friends in Massachusetts, where “she was one of the planets moving around the sun.” Now she is just a “lone planet.” My throat gets tight and my brain goes into fix-it mode: A new puppy, a trampoline, a call to 1-800-RENT-A-FRIEND….anything to make it better. But I can only listen, or cuddle, or on really desperate nights, promise to paint pottery at Color Me Mine.

And I think of all the times my mom must have felt this way: When I didn’t make the cheerleading squad, got teased for my bad skin, failed my math test again, had my heart broken. How those events hurt her as much as they hurt me.

More. They hurt her more.

So I want to say thank you, Mom.

Thank you for all the times you drove me back to school to retrieve my flute from my locker, for staying up past midnight helping me with my First Lady report on Jackie Kennedy, my African Serengeti diorama, the Eqyptian pyramid out of sugar cubes. Thank you for changing “candy stripper” to “candy striper” on my college applications.

Thank you for saving every artifact of my childhood: my Lolly Dolly, my bound and illustrated story of Pete the Planaria, and my peach, taffeta 8th grade graduation dress. Even 23 years later, it still makes a statement:

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Thank you for answering the phone 12 years ago when Phil called during our 24-hour “break-up,” and for telling him I was on a date with Danny Saland, even though I hadn’t seen Danny Saland since 12th grade, and for the record no one has called him “Danny” since 8th grade. It’s Dan.

Thank you for planting my tulip bulbs and for the buying/ironing/application of bed skirts (aka. “dust ruffles”) to my beds, things we both know would never happen if left under my tutelage. Thank you for reciting your cheeseball recipe for the 78th time because I always lose the post-it note I scribbled it on, for buying me a recipe box even though you know I will never use it, for mailing me a random newspaper wedding announcement of a girl from my Brownie Troop, an obituary of a priest I guess I should remember, and Bed Bath and Beyond coupons with a sticky note: “For the duvet cover clips.”

Thank you for spoiling my kids, for giving them rolls with lots of butter for breakfast but still making them eat broccoli for dinner, for hiding in a closet every time Emma comes home from school during one of your visits.  Thank you for always having new Sponge Bob toothbrushes at your house so I don’t have to remember to pack them. Thank you for taking the girls to the Florham Park Roller Rink and ACTUALLY ROLLER SKATING, for buying them socks at Costco, for playing ONE MORE GAME of Old Maid…for loving my children so much that you cry when they cry.

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Thank you for the times you let me reject your help. For letting me make my own mistakes decisions when every fiber of your being wanted to scream “NOOOOOO!” Like when I flew out to Chicago to visit a boyfriend you already knew was gay, or moved in with Phil before we were married, or chose cash over Waterford crystal as a wedding gift from Nannie. You stayed silent.  Because some decisions aren’t meant to be fixed, but owned and assimilated by the person who made them.

Yet here you are, the Brick Lady in your seashell robe, risking back injury and neighborhood gossip so my succulents will stand tall and proud. And that doesn’t feel like fixing. It feels like love. And I need that as much at age 36 as I did at 16…or six.

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Thanks for taking care of me, Mom. Please don’t ever stop.

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Happy Mother’s Day xoxo

 

116 thoughts on “Why I Still Need My Mom”

  1. This post was so wonderful. Thank you so much for remembering all those small things your mom did that add up to a lifetime of love. I don’t know if your mom will cry when she reads this but I know I did. Happy Mother’s Day, Jessie.

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  3. Must wipe the tears. I miss my mom.
    Yet another powerful yet simple message.
    I agree that the hardest part of being a mom is having to watch and not try to fix.
    Jessie, please keep writing!

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  4. Do you know what I love best about reading your words? They paint a vivid image of everyone you write about – including yourself. I not only have a sense of how wonderful your Mom is — but how she feels — and how you feel. And so often, I feel the same way. Thanks for a beautiful piece Jessi!

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  5. Bawling. BAWLING. This is so wonderful. I wrote a post to my mom that’s going live next week and … oh, it’s all so wonderful, and so fraught, and so bright with understanding now that I’m on the other side. “The trick is not to fix but to allow.” OH, my, YES. xox

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  6. Amen! You’ve said it all! …and no matter how old your children get… you feel their pain, but fortunately, you can also celebrate their happiness with them!!! Happy Mothers Day to you and your mom!

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  7. This is beautiful and so true. I never realized how much I needed my mom until I had kids. Love your blogs!

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  8. Jessie you didn’t need anyone else’s anecdotes or memories of your mom. Yours were perfect. Happy Mother’s Day to you too!

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  9. I really love your writing – and your humor and I miss my Mom.
    I see both myself and her in almost every anecdote.
    All the Mother’s Day gift I need!

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  16. Wow, I blubbered hugely, after reading this! I so miss my Mama–just before I came onto your post (congrats on being “Fresher Pressed”, too!), I had finished posting a ” mother’s day ” post to mine.

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    • Thank you! I am sorry about your mom – Mother’s Day is a tough one for many, and will be for me too, one day. Hope you got through it ok;) Thanks for reading and commenting!

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  19. I suppose the definition of love is putting another above yourself – when you wish you could take all the suffering for them, for that would be better than to watch something bad happen to them. And mothers are the best at that.

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  25. I’m so glad I read this. What a beautiful portrait of motherly love and all the ways it reveals itself. It’s been a rough Mother’s Day for me and this really perked me up and soothed my heart. Happy Mother’s Day to you and your lovely mother!

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  29. You’re right…the real kicker is sometimes letting them fall so they can learn from tripping. We’ll always be there to help them wipe off the proverbial dust, but it’s nail biting agony to watch them when you already know what the outcome will be. Excellent writing! Well done!

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  36. This post is remarkable with all the real life experiences you (& we all hav) been through along with the photographs! An amazing work ! Congratulations 🙂 Your mom must be so proud !

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  37. Unbelievable. This made me laugh and cry and see all the fixing and helping and loving and letting go my own mom did. I just adore your writing.

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  40. Beautiful post! I was just saying to a friend the other day that we moms take on way more of our kids pain than they do. “How those events hurt her as much as they hurt me. More. They hurt her more.” So true! Hope you had a wonderful mother’s day!

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  48. This is how we life on . Regardless of what anyone believes about the Afterlife [or not?] This post right here exemplifies how we can life on. Brilliantly captured. Thank you for sharing this

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