When your mom has been gone for 23 years, you develop a muscle. This missing mom muscle strengthens each time you use it, keeping you afloat when you might otherwise drown in her absence.
You flex the muscle when you want to call her, but she’s not even in your contacts—she died before the first iPhone. When you see her favorite Constant Comment tea at the grocery store. When you find the wrinkled brown paper bag holding her gold-rimmed China plates. When you smell the bittersweet scent of marigolds, or her soft lavender-colored wool sweater you keep on the top shelf of your closet. When you hear Robert Redford died—she adored him, especially in The Way We Were.
The safest place on earth (backseat of a Volkswagon Beetle), 1971
Watching your Kindergarten students love their mothers, your missing mom muscle twinges. Every morning, a little girl tells you her crayon picture is for her mama. Rainbows, crooked flowers, lopsided smileys, and dark caves—each one for mama. A lump forms in your throat, but you flex the missing mom muscle and push it down. You want to tell her you understand, that all you do is for your mom too, but you don’t think that would make sense to a five-year-old (although you might be wrong). Instead, you smile, praise her picture, and say you know her mom will love it.
Kindergarten masterpiece, for her Mama
The times that are the hardest, the times when the missing mom muscle gets a serious workout, are when you feel mistreated or misunderstood. Even, maybe especially, by your own family. Those are the times when you want to collapse into her arms, to feel her cool hand on your forehead, to hear her softly singing hymns to you like she did when you were a child. Mostly, you want to be understood the way she understood you, to be known and loved the way she knew and loved you. You hate the devastating truth lurking behind your yearning—no one will ever understand, know, or love you that way again.
In those times, the missing mom muscle feels like it’s tearing.
Other times, you want her to swim in your puddle of pride. The change in careers, the longevity of your marriage, your spiritual evolution, the birth of your children, your writing, and your sobriety. Your triumphs would be that much sweeter if she knew, if she could celebrate alongside you.
Enjoying Mexico with Mom, 1998
You sort through pictures, and you find some of her gazing at babies.
One of the babies is you.
You know she would have looked at your children, her grandchildren, the same way, and that they would have adored her. You know she would have loved them the way she loved you. You feel as if there is a gaping hole in your children’s lives, and you wonder if they feel it too.
You close your eyes and call on all she taught you about the power and the infinitude of Love. You flex the muscle harder than ever. These 23 years have taught you that you won’t, you can’t, let yourself drown without her.
Today, in honor of my mother’s birthday, I will share a hot tip: find a partner who sees and admires you enough to take pictures of you as beautiful as the ones my father took of my mother.
San Francisco, California, 1971
My mother, Patricia H., was an East Coast native who took to Northern California and its terrain and culture like a cat to a warm shaft of sunlight. She stayed for nearly two decades, living and loving. Besides her work as a spiritual healer, she counted caring for me and my dad and tending a large abundant organic Sonoma County garden (that fed our family of three for years) as her greatest joys.
Yosemite, California 1974
A woman both vibrant and quietly confident, her boisterous grinning laugh used to take over her body while her head bobbed slightly to the infectious beat. She affectionately called me Chickadee and to me, her only child, time seemed to pause while I took in the beauty of her laugh.
Honolulu, Hawaii, 1969
A memory of her laughing will remain forever in my mind’s eye, but I also like to keep a photo of her in the act above my writing desk. In the image, taken by my father, my mother and I enjoy a humorous moment at my fourth birthday party.
Cocoa Beach, Florida, 1975
Unbelievably, my mother has been gone for nearly twenty-one years now. Thankfully, photographs play a vital role in keeping her image alive. My children never had a chance to meet their maternal grandmother but I hope that they can gaze at her photographs (and some video) and imagine her as part of their experience.
1979
Because she still is.
Larkspur, California 1977
My mother’s career as a spiritual healer meant she helped people learn about divine Love. She had a gift for facilitating trust and understanding that resulted in true healing. I often think about how the world could really use her prayers right about now, but I also believe she is still actively sending them our way.
This is only the second turtle visitor we have found on our property in 9 years.
Every year something special seems to happen on this day — this morning a (rare) turtle visited my husband in the garden. In the afternoon, I took a hike with an old friend where the breeze caressed my cheek, the sunlight dappled the trail ahead and the trees seemed to reach out their limbs in comfort and praise.
Rainbows have stretched over us on this day, unexpected flowers have bloomed, and one year the first dragonfly ever glimpsed in our garden made a brief, brilliant appearance.
Tonight, our family will mark the day by gathering to light a candle, as we always do on May 20th.
Fourteen years ago, this day was not a celebration. My oldest son Cypress was born at full term, but he was not alive. I’m always full of conflict when the anniversary comes around. Part contemplative, other parts sad, proud, happy, and tired. Also, oddly energized.
Fourteen years ago, instead of cradling a crying, radiant newborn, we sat in a silent, cold hospital room, heavy with grief and pain. Birth most often brings gifts of joy, relevance, and new life. But Cypress did not get to live out his earthly life, and that fact can feel punishing and cruel. The truth is, on the day of his birth I was swimming in so much physical, emotional and spiritual pain that I couldn’t imagine ever feeling joy again.
As always, the forest comforts, provides solace, and accepts me as I am.
However, to my amazement, not only have I felt joy again, his birth and the nine months I cradled him close to my heart have also brought great gifts. Slowly, the value of those presents have unfurled over the years. My understanding of the meaning and truth of life has deepened and expanded. I’ve become more compassionate, patient, realistic and loving since becoming Cypress’ mother.
In the early days of my loss I hardly wanted to be around babies, pregnant people or children. Protecting myself and my heart felt necessary. Nowadays my two living kids and my work as a preschool teacher ensure that I have daily contact with children, their lives, their challenges, their growth, their joy.
Growth and rebirth never stop, for plants and humans both.
It is clear to me that we have as much, if not more, to learn from children as they do from us — if we are willing.
No longer do I neglect my talents, numb my mind/pain, ignore what requires attention. I understand our time here on this beautiful blue-green ship must not be wasted, pushed away, or taken for granted. Besides that first awful year after his loss, bitterness, self-condemnation, hate, and depression have not won. I’m determined that they never will.
Despite material appearances, we are still connected to our oldest child, he will forever be a part of our family. That’s why special things happen on this day (and other days). Cypress is close, he would like to reach and teach us if we open our hearts and recognize his presence. In turn, I can offer him the mothering he still waits on and needs from me.
The sun ray captured yesterday in the garden made me think there might have been a third presence (in addition to the cat).
He is wise, thoughtful and funny, my oldest son.
Strengthening connections to those we love who have passed on brings rejuvenation and healing to our minds and hearts.
And there are some days we need it more than others.
It’s a mid-week birthday celebration. Three hyped-up ten-year-old girls are sprawled across my dark blue living room sectional, matching white Stanley water bottles lined up on the coffee table, multi-colored lights flashing on the Christmas tree in the corner. Popcorn pours into their open mouths while they expertly jam thin red straws into chilled pouches of fruit-punch-flavored Capri Sun.
Their pattering conversation drifts upstairs to my listening ears “Name each album and your favorite songs from each one…I love her outfit, it’s so Taylor…I wish I could be a dancer for Taylor…if you come in here and you like Kanye, you’re OUT…when Taylor dies, I die.”
One of the three girls is my daughter and she’s begged to have her two most enthusiastic “Swiftie” (the term for serious Taylor Swift fans) girlfriends over tonight to watch Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour (Extended Version) on television.
If the news somehow passed you by, I’m here to tell you that December 13th is Taylor’s 34th birthday. To mark the occasion Time Magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year has decided to release (to television) the film version of her 1.04 BILLION-dollar-generating tour.
I join the three downstairs to watch as the concert opens with a sweeping overhead view of the twinkling lights of the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. My girl and her friends are already on their feet, facing the television with their arms raised. They are ready to move, to scream, and feel the music wash over them.
The Swifties take over the living room. Miraculously, no glass shattered.
Because I am an “older” mom (I was in my early forties when I had my kids) I am well aware of the vast chasm between how the world was during my youth and how it is now, for my daughter. The internet didn’t pick up speed until my college years, for example. For Swifties, 1989 is the year of Taylor’s birth as well as the title of her best-selling album.
For me, 1989 is the year I graduated high school.
While the girls continue their excited chatter I flashback to a couple of months ago, when I sat in the last row of a movie theatre watching the same Eras Tour film on the big screen, next to my daughter and her friend. It was a Sunday and we arrived 45 minutes early. Parts of the evening went as expected: the girls exchanged beaded Swiftie bracelets with others in line and excitedly discussed their favorite songs, then rushed into the theatre and settled into their seats clutching bags of candy and slushies as big as their heads.
The bracelet exchange (during which, in the name of fandom, my daughter traded away her favorite bracelet of all-time.)
Other parts of the show caught me by surprise: from the moment Swift stepped out onto the stage to sing the first notes of “Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince” her lilting yet commanding voice pulled all attention her way, and it pretty much remained on her for the rest of the concert. Swift’s uncanny ability to tell a relatable story through her lyrics, her mesmerizing yet accessible booty-shaking, her diverse backup singers, and her immense talent as a musician and entertainer were all on display…for three full hours.
I, for one, couldn’t look away.
Another revelation: While sitting there in the movie theatre singing along with my daughter, I found myself reliving not only the rocky terrain of my teenage years but my 20s and early 30s as well. As a writer currently mining her own life for stories that play into universal themes I was pulled right in—things I hadn’t thought about in years flashed through my mind, synapsis connecting, my heart beating in time to the lyrics:
“Give me back my girlhood
It was mine first”
—Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve
“Back when we were still changin’ for the better
Wanting was enough
For me, it was enough
To live for the hope of it all”
—August
…and a newly discovered gem (look it up…this is the one that got me up out of my seat):
“I’m so sick of running as fast as I can
Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man
And I’m so sick of them coming at me again
‘Cause if I was a man
Then I’d be the man”
—The Man
There in the darkened theatre I didn’t just think about those epic times, I FELT the emotions of those eras in my life. Glancing over at my joy-filled daughter and her friend, this reggae-loving Phish-head realized that even though we were singing the same lyrics their interpretation was probably entirely different. They have only ten years of experience under their belts, puberty looms on the horizon, and the world embraces them differently than it did me. Yet isn’t that the way with every generation, rolling forward together? Our situation just happens to be padded with an extra fifteen years (or more).
Amazingly, our ages cease to matter in the face of Taylor’s gift—she seems to embody the parts of us that are unabashedly female, and powerful, and entirely unapologetic. And the thing is, we are ALL made of complex parts yearning to connect…no matter our gender, our number of days on the planet, or our skin color.
As we walked out of the theatre I looked over at my glowing girl and said “Okay, I get it, I’m officially a Swiftie now.”
Why sit when you can dance?
Back in our living room my 11-year-old son (who earlier jammed his hulking headphones over his ears and fled upstairs to escape the echoing shrieks) has now come back downstairs to see the show. With wide eyes he watches the girls watching Taylor before joining them to sing along to a song he recognizes. For a moment I can’t differentiate between his high-pitched vocals and theirs.
Later, despite the Midwest darkness outside and the 33 degree temps the three girls step out onto the deck and yell into the night, their strong voices rising in unison “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TAYLOR, WE LOVE YOU!!”
Their congratulations are so heartfelt that I think Taylor, wherever she is tonight, just might have heard them.
You never cared much for birthdays but today is yours. I imagine that you would rock your 85th year like no one’s business, continuing your lifelong practice and talent for helping people heal and get closer to divine Love. Your unabashedly hearty, crinkled-eyed, open mouthed laugh would still fill my ears.
As for me, I lie awake trying to grasp how it is that I haven’t spoken to you, heard your laugh, or felt your touch in TWENTY YEARS.
When you first left, I didn’t think I’d make it through a single day without you. Things got brutal toward the end, didn’t they? That horrid disease crept up and took over your insides and turned your vibrancy into dullness. Your beautiful thick hair turned thin, your healthy body skeletal and swollen.
You hardly spoke a word during the month before your death and I believe it was because you wondered if you had been betrayed by God—I think we all wondered.
I really thought we were going to save you—me, Dad, Pam, and God. That our little team would pray the right prayers, find the best doctor, take the most effective approach to fighting stage four cancer. Afterward, and for a long time, I thought we had failed. All of us.
You must have worried that because of what was happening I’d lose my own faith in Love. To be honest, for a while, I did. I doubted almost everything. Was our God truly a loving God, or had we deceived ourselves? For years after we lost you I limped along, tightly gripping a stale faith that no longer brought me peace and inspiration. Then, I lost my first child, and all bets were off. I spent an entire year without any faith at all.
Somehow, I don’t think all of this is news to you. I believe you were riding alongside me the whole time. You stayed close, you answered when I called, and you sent all manner of angels to nudge and protect me.
Well, Mama, twenty years later the world has changed, people you cherished have left, and people you would adore have arrived. Besides your two grandkids, I think the thing you would be most proud of is how I’ve evolved. I’m still the person you taught me to be but nowadays I’m so much better. I’m a writer who can’t stop writing, a present preschool teacher, and a mom who loves her children the way you loved me. I’m sober, clear, and hopeful.
I understand now that none of us failed. Cancer didn’t win. We succeeded because we knew your love, and you knew ours. The love you were, the love you are, has no end—it remains vital, effective, and alive. It was through your earthly death that I learned the single greatest lesson of my own life: love never dies. It is by its very nature, eternal.
Our family of four is spending a spring afternoon at a Midwest amusement park, dashing from ride to ride and learning how to be in crowds post-pandemic (“Don’t touch that…or that…please use this hand sanitizer for the fifth time“).
Moments after we disembark the roller coaster, our two “older-parent” bodies staggering while our eight-and-nine-year-olds yelp with delight, a late-season cicada lands on my daughter’s sleeve. Delighted, she gives it a ride for the next two hours.
In an attempt to head off some gathering-force meltdowns and enjoy a celebratory lunch for my husband’s birthday, we find a brewery in a far corner of the park. Once inside the cavernous, darkened restaurant, we are offered a booth near three TVs mounted in a row overhead. We find out no beer is brewed in the brewery, and learn that no one knows what fish is in the sushi until the manager concludes that it is not fish at all.
My nine-year-old son plops down next to me on the booth’s bench, across from his dad and sister. The kids decide to share chicken wings, their first time trying the dish, and two faces are soon dripping with bar-b-que sauce. Bright-orange grease covers my daughter’s hands and spreads across her pink cheeks. She asks her dad to take a picture and laughs with delight when she sees it, enjoying her new look. None of us realize this is the first and last time she will eat chicken wings, as she declares herself a confirmed vegetarian days later.
My son and I are facing the three TVs hanging above my husband and daughter’s heads. I glance up to see sports on the second two TVs and a news conference on the first one. My son’s eyes are on the Celtics players as they leap and shoot.
I know immediately what the news conference is about–the happenings in Ulvade, TX the day before. A man is talking at a podium flanked by officers and his stark words unfurl clearly on the ticker below. As we continue eating our meal I announce, over my family’s protests, that I am no longer going to be joining in on the super fast jerky roller coaster rides–my coaster career is officially over. How can I coax my son to the other side of the table so that he doesn’t see the news conference facing us on the screen?
My daughter and husband head to the bathroom to wash their hands, cicada still firmly gripping her upper sleeve. I watch my son follow the basketball game. Beginning to gaze off into the distance, I consider the remainder of our day. Thanks to the distractions of today’s birthday celebration and amusement park entertainment I’ve been able to temporarily push away the headlines about yesterday’s shooting in Texas, although fleeting fears have snuck in at moments like the panic-inducing crest of the rollercoaster or imagined gunshots as we pass through a crowded thoroughfare at the park.
Flying, if only for a moment.
My son is still watching basketball and they are almost back from the bathroom. I’ve requested the bill and plan to hustle us directly toward the exit before anyone notices the press conference–I can’t suggest we switch to the other side of the booth because my highly sensitive and inquisitive son would demand a reason why. Then I see his gaze shift squarely to the first TV.
Of course, he sees it. The TV is directly in front of him after all. I curse myself, why didn’t I move tables when we first came in? Because it was the only available booth and given a choice my kids always pick the booth.
I follow along as his eyes skim the ticker, then his mouth forms the words while he reads out loud “Eighteen-year-old man shoots seventeen 9-year-olds and their teacher.”
Am I watching the moment my son loses his innocence, his faith that his parents and his teachers are infallible and the world around him is mostly good? He blinks his eyes and I know his brain can barely register such horror. And their teacher….? He looks at me his eyes wide as quarters. I know what he is going to ask next. I better start forming an answer.
“Why, mom? Why would he do that?”
I will myself to form words with my mouth…but what words? What words can make order out of chaos, hope out of despair, and life out of death?
I say that the man wasn’t well in his head, that he needed help and love that he didn’t get. It’s up to us to change this world, up to us to create more love and less of this (I point to the screen), I tell my son. Less guns, less hate. More love. My boy is still processing the headline, mouth open in disbelief. Is he trying to imagine it might not be true? Daughter and husband return to the table.
Once they are seated back on their side my son leans slowly across the table toward his sister…drawing out her name in a mischievous tone. I know he wants to share the forbidden information, to tell her about what he just saw announced on TV. I say his name sharply and he gets quiet. “Which roller coaster we should hunt down next? I ask everyone…“It’s still Dad’s birthday!” I announce loudly.
The check is resolved and I shuffle us toward the exit–my son half runs half skips out and settles into step next to his dad. They walk up the path ahead, their moving figures silhouetted in the afternoon sun.
Walking next to me, my daughter calls out softly, “Mom, look.” I watch as the cicada hesitates, then steps off her hand and onto a leaf, both plant and insect glowing emerald green in the light. After making sure the cicada is safe, my daughter leaves it tucked into a curled sleeping bag of a leaf; unbothered, hidden, and protected.
This week of the year holds a complicated mixture of markers in our household. The last day of school happens for my two elementary school-age children, along with the many clear and poignant indicators of their growth, evolution, and hopes for the future.
And then May 20th arrives, which is the birthday of my stillborn son, born thirteen years ago at full-term, on his due date.
Over the years I’ve realized that all kinds of meaning can mesh together, that celebration can live next to tragedy, that growth can coexist with decay, that addiction can give release to freedom, that life can cohabitate with death. The interplay of all of this is what makes up our meaningful lives. We can cultivate an appreciation of the difficult as deeply as we can appreciate the joyous. In fact, one might require the other.
Focus on the journey, the destination will take care of itself.
I used to think I was odd for seeing things this way, that my ability to bridge worlds was a detriment. Now, I realize it is a unique gift and I’ve embraced it as my superpower.
I’ve made great strides in opening my heart to mothering my first-born son—it has become clear to me that he still needs his mama and with each passing year I become more acquainted with his innocent yet knowing presence. All-encompassing searing grief has made room for a quiet and loving connection. I believe this practice of communication makes me a better, more conscious mother and human.
Mostly, I’m grateful to sit peacefully under a tree in a park. The same park I walked in sorrow after my son’s passing. I feel the wind around me gently moving branches above and consider the roots of the Cypress tree I sit beneath.
I know that later I can hug my living kids and I am grateful. Grateful to have an abundance of meaning in our lives and no absence of love.
Still...however...maybe... 
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