Your Mother is always with you even if you pretend you don't have one.

~ Unknown ~

Your Mother is always with you. She’s the whisper of the leaves as you walk down the street, she’s the smell of certain foods you remember, flowers you pick, the fragrance of life itself.

She’s the cool hand on your brow when you’re not feeling well, she’s your breath in the air on a cold winter’s day. She is the sound of the rain that lulls you to sleep, the colours of a rainbow. Your mother lives inside your laughter.

She’s the place you came from, your first home, and she’s the map you follow with every step you take. She’s your first love, your first friend, even your first enemy, but nothing on earth can separate you. Not time, not space, not even death.

"The Hangover of Mothers Day"

Mothers Day 2019 was full of anxiety but that isn't anything new.   I am not like the other mothers. I am Mary, and although I was blessed to give birth three times I'm left to feel these three children don't know me and even worse they don't want to know me and they definitely have no time for me. 

I feel left out and alone from my solitary position.  I dread the feeling, I dread it most when another mother says to me in passing conversation, "What did you do for Mothers Day"?   

Instantly I feel myself shake and stinging tears well up inside my eyes and I fight like hell to stop those tears from popping out of my silly old eyes and giving me up for being some kind of a fake mother.  The pain of a lifetime is being held back against the other side of my eyes.  Instantly I want to run.  I want to disappear.  I want to make it right. I want a chance like other mothers have.  There are no perfect mothers and I will never be good enough.

It may be an exaggeration, but every mother I know was heaped with love and gifts, special breakfasts, lunches or picnics in the park.  I didn't get any phone calls and no one fed me.  This intimate knowledge of what others are doing is made so visible via social media and it feels like everyone knows that I didn't get cards to keep.  

I self deprecate, I went without lunch.  I didn't want to eat just in case  my children arrived at my door as a gigantic surprise.  It would be a disaster if I was full and they arrived to take me to lunch.  Just that statement alone will tell anyone reading this how I somehow see it as I am the one responsible if things don't work out.

I'm not a real mother and that's why my children are not real children is how I try to resolve the pain.  This is the lunacy of abandonment.  This is the twisted pain of a lifetime of taking responsibility for everything as being my fault.  Yes it's this crazy thinking that overwhelms me as it does.  It disables me.  It causes me to talk nervously.  It causes me to try too hard and make mistakes.  It shows me I don't manage this very well.  It shows me I have much work yet to do.

This year was the first Mothers Day being a grandmother to Baby Luca (Jesse's son).