Though I have long believed that Mother's Day is the only holiday I have truly earned, I anticipate it this year in a way I never have. Oddly, I have almost forgotten that I am, technically, an honoree. This year, my daughter is a mother. My daughter feels her own daughter's pain long after the actual pain has been forgotten. She feels her daughter's hunger with an urgency that puts our own struggles with "hangry-ness" to shame. She sees the world through her daughter's eyes, and knows what it feels like to want all things evil or even mildly unpleasant to go away, just for her daughter's sake.
My own mother, a plane ride away in a nursing home and not with me this Mother's day in person, must know how I feel. A mother of a mother, a mother of a person who has become the thing that changed me forever. I should be celebrating my mother -- a grandmother, and now a great-grandmother -- a woman who has been at this business for more than six decades. But I'm guessing she, too, believes this Mother's Day is about the new one in our ranks.
The other grandmothers in our local band of celebrants this year (yes, there are more than two of us in our modern family) have chosen their grandma names, yet I remain undecided. My first choice -- bubbe -- has been squarely rejected, though I think my granddaughter would take well to the simplicity of the word. I've chewed on other options, but just cannot commit. "TBD" it is, for now.
The point is, it's not about me, and my moniker can wait. It's about my daughter, forever changed. And it's about my mother, who knows not only what it's like to love a daughter, but also to love a daughter who loves a daughter who loves a daughter. How cool is that?
To all the women out there who have ever loved someone in a way that cannot be described, this Mother's Day for you.
