Why I'm not writing about my mother

Trying to write about my mother is hard. Very hard. It's too close, too immense, too real. My palette of words dries up. It's like trying to capture the splendor of the Grand Canyon standing down inside it, when all you can squeeze in are some rocks and maybe a wildflower or two. Yes, they make up part of it; but the parts are not equal to the whole.

Or maybe it's like trying to take a snapshot of a prairie sunrise, when the world is clean and the sky is big and the sun is soaking up shadows with a whole day's worth of light and the clouds are colors we can never come up with names to describe that look like glimpses into heaven. You hear the "click," and wait anxiously to see the results, sure that this will win some kind of photography award, and when you see it, you say "That is not it at all. That is not what it meant at all."

I could give you reasons I love my mother. But they might sound like bragging. And what child doesn't think her mother is the prettiest, smartest, nicest, and generally best? I can't help it that mine really is.

I think what it comes down to is, as a character said in a book my mother would know, "Mainly, I love you for existing." I love her because she is the mostest, realest, bestest her there could be. She has done many things deserving of love, but being is the real reason I love her.

Maybe I can write about mothers in general. I think their importance and influence has been understood much better at some points in history than it is now. There was a time when people said that "the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world."

But I think people are afraid to say that now. Little girls have much more freedom to pursue careers and activities, and are encouraged to dream big. Freedom is wonderful-- I have always wanted to be a writer when I grow up, and love being able to chase that dream. But at the same time, I think a (perhaps unintentional) stigma is attached to being "just a mom." Being "just a mom" is big enough and real enough and enough to be a height to which any woman can fearfully aspire.

Women (and girls) are told that they shouldn't have to sacrifice their careers and their happiness for their children. But the essence of motherhood, just like the essence of any love, is sacrifice.

I have been very blessed through the pictures of motherhood that I have seen growing up. Not just in my own mother, although she is the one I know the most through experience. I also have a wonderful picture in my grandmother, and in other mothers I have observed, who I can appreciate even more now that some of my friends are mothers.

But I believe some of the most important people that we will never know about are the mothers who shaped the way their children thought, and instilled in them thoughts that mattered. And their children listened because they had seen their mothers living what they believed through their love and sacrifice.

As I grew older, I came to understand that my mother didn't wash all those dishes and laundry and cook meals and get up in the middle of the night when we couldn't sleep just because she loved doing those things so much. Nor was it because she was forced to by some law of nature that I took for granted, which made her be there whenever I needed her. But she loved us, and so she did those things even if she didn't like them.

This Mother's Day, let's each remember the first influence on our lives, who may be someone other than a birth mother, but who lived that position by choice. And let us tell them "thank you," and "I love you," even if that will never come close to expressing what we really want to say.

There is a lot more I could say if I were writing about my mother. But I'm not, so I can only say that I still want to be just like her when I grow up.