admin, Author at Mothering in the Middle

This Is What Happiness Is…

by Aviva Luria

“Pickul Clan”

“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

– Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Someone posted the above quote by Kurt Vonnegut on Facebook recently and it truly spoke to me. I hadn’t encountered it before; although Kurt Vonnegut was one of my favorite authors in high school, I’ve read very little of him since. I loved him then because he made me laugh and think and view the world in a new, demented way, and this is likely at least partially why I am the way I am now: cynical but loving and tending to view the world in an odd, demented way.

Have you ever said to yourself, “I am happy now; this is what happiness is?” I’ve always thought it was a little odd that I do. I’ve long thought it was my writing tendency that so often made me feel as though I were standing apart from the scene in which I found myself, a somewhat impartial observer. Reading that quote made me realize that, even if that’s a strange thing to do, I’m not entirely alone. Kurt Vonnegut, at least, knew about that. […]

Breakfast in Bed

by Andrea Hopkins

Weeks before Mother’s Day, it became clear that six-year-old Claire had absorbed the importance of the day and had big plans to check off every box a child could check to mark the occasion. Bags of artwork would come home from daycare and school, but I was not allowed to look — it’s a surprise, she’d say. Pockets were filled with pebbles one day and pine cones the next, but if I even asked about their purpose, I was met with a plea not to look, not to ask, not to wonder. It’s a surprise.

She fretted that her oven mitts were at school (for the class pizzeria — don’t even ask): how was she going to bake? She needed a recipe for chocolate cake, but I was not to inquire why. She needed to know how much something would cost, but she wouldn’t tell me what, or where, or how. […]

Finding Compassion in Motherhood

by Lora Freeman Williams

When I held my son in my arms for the first time, awe welled up within me as I gazed into his liquid, soulful his eyes. He returned my gaze, wailing to me just how difficult his journey had been, how shocking this moment was to him. I have never been so fully present a witness to someone’s story as I was at that moment.

As a new mother, I wanted to be that present to him every moment of his life to come. I was in my late 30s, educated, a Buddhist meditation practitioner and in recovery from a massively abusive childhood. I would be everything my mother was not able to be most of my childhood: present both physically and emotionally. I would give him the experience of having a parent witness his experiences with so much love that he would grow up to be deeply connected to himself and to others, trusting that the world is a safe place. […]

What Lies Within – Reflections on Being a Mother

by Michelle Eisler

Who are you in the hidden corners of your heart? What are the secrets that no one knows about, tucked away in the dark?

Do you hope for more happiness or wish for less pain? Do you dream of perfect health, maybe you hold onto memories from your 20’s.

Is there something you haven’t been brave enough to step out and do but the glimmer of hope still flickers in your heart?

The reality is during any given day you are the caregiver, the doctor, the chef and the housecleaner. You may work outside of the home, after which you come back and pick up where you left off. Some of you spend your day in the home, being a teacher, acting as chauffeur, or a cheerleader, and the lady at the laundry mat. […]

’57 at 57

by Elizabeth Gregory

My mom had her first baby in 1957, the peak of the boom. Since day one, I could take for granted that whatever was happening to me was going to be interesting or at least familiar to multitudes. And as a Dr. Spock devotee and nursery school teacher with an MA in early childhood education, my mom was perfectly cast to grow my feeling of specialness, even among the hordes of my equally special peers.

1957 was 57 years ago this year, and as I move through my first Mother’s Day without my mom in the world, I know my loneliness is shared by millions of motherless women and men, boomers and non. For some of us the effect is intensified by missing our dads as well—all access cut to that private family culture of people who get our old jokes and references, and who reliably care about what we think and what we and our kids are doing. What’s the use of a smart-phone if there’s no mom or dad on the other end to savor the photos of my kids that I keep almost sending them? […]

My Daughter’s Mothers

Hanni Beyer Lee

My three daughters were all adopted from China at older ages. Despite the immense losses each of them have carried, they have loved me and accepted my affection and care without question.

It doesn’t mean they have not hurt inside or pushed back at me. But they have called me Mama from the get-go and always reached out when they needed me.

My second daughter has a different story. We found her family early on. Her life in a state-run orphanage in the historical city of Nanjing ended at age 7 when I flew there to get her. I presumed she had been one of countless abandoned infants and spent many years with her orphaned peers.

I met Jiawen on an unusually warm evening in March, 1999. Although the flight was predictably excruciating, I was ecstatic. I was pulsing with adrenalin and I felt very confident, having done this the year before. I spoke Mandarin, and China was no longer a wildly foreign place. […]

Adoptive Moms and Mother’s Day

by Jane Samuel

When is a mom really a mom? When do we get to stand up and take the recognition being handed out in the Hallmark card aisle and the pews at church? In the newspapers and May issues of women’s magazines? In the perfume and jewelry departments? In the breakfast-in-bed rooms and brunch-serving restaurants?

In my younger-I-know-it-all days I would have answered, “When you give birth and raise that child you get the card, the flowers, the hugs and kisses.” Then life experience expanded to include miscarriages and adoption. Despite feeling just as fully a mother on those occasions, my perception of myself did not always match the outside world’s opinion of me. Indeed I would be rich if I had a dime for every time I was asked if I was my Asian daughter’s “real mother?” […]

Mother’s Day Flowers

by Tracy Franz

It is May 8, 2010,* the day before Mother’s Day, and I am in Takamori, Japan, with my one-year-old son’s hand in mine, carefully climbing the stone steps to the gate of my husband’s teacher’s temple.

We are here to celebrate Hanamatsuri, or the “Festival of Flowers”—otherwise known as the Buddha’s Birthday.

As we enter the garden, I see that the sliding doors encircling the main building are open to fresh countryside air. A number of families have already settled on their cushions around a statue of the baby Buddha standing beneath a flower-covered canopy.

Soon, the children will be invited to pour sweet tea brewed from the leaves of hydrangea over the likeness, bathing it as tenderly as a real newborn. In this way, the boys and girls are encouraged—briefly—to step into the parental role, an exercise in compassion and generosity. […]

Mother’s Day

by Cyma Shapiro

First flowers given to me for Mother’s Day from my (step) son…so long ago…

I remember the first Mother’s Day card I received. It was ten years ago. I’d been a new mom for two months. I was a more than timid about reading the card; nearly embarrassed about acknowledging my new-found status.

It was similar to an incident which occurred around the same time. While at a local Blockbuster, my baby called out to me in front of some acquaintances. Unaware that I’d become a new mom, they nearly paled when they saw that I was the recipient. I couldn’t face them directly, but caught their disbelief out of the corner of my eye. I was almost embarrassed for them. I wondered whether I appeared “motherly enough;” whether they’d ever seen me that way. […]

11 Great Mother’s Day Quotes

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.” — Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

“The phrase ‘Working Mother’ is redundant.” — Jane Sellman

“She never quite leaves her children at home, even when she doesn’t take them along.” — Margaret Culkin Banning

“Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had, and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.” — Linda Wooten

“Any mother could do the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease.” — Lisa Alther

“The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.” — Jessica Lange

“A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.” — Tenneva Jordan

“We never know the love of the parent until we become parents ourselves.” — Henry Ward Beecher

“Anyone who doesn’t miss the past never had a mother.” — Gregory Nunn

“A mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.” — Emily Dickinson

“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” — Abraham Lincoln

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