By Anne Walls
I am 34 years old. I neither have a mother nor am a mother. I lost my own years ago and probably wonât become one for a few years still. This Sunday is Motherâs Day. And it blows.
Being a child without a mother is tragic. Being a relatively young adult without one is a little less sad, but still really, really sucks. My mom died when I was 20 years old and thereâs not one day that passes where I donât think of her in some way, be it fleeting painful memory or still-funny inside joke. It hurts every day. I resent that once a year I am forced to stare my motherless stature in the face while others make brunch plans and send flowers.
Iâm also just getting to the stage â who am I kidding, Iâve been here a few years now – where my friends are becoming mothers themselves. And thatâs another gut punch, in a way, because these women Iâve grown up with are now all members of a society I canât belong to, at least not yet anyway. Theyâre being celebrated this weekend, coating the walls of Facebook and Instagram with photos of handmade cards with wobbly writing, just-picked bouquets, and smiling husbands holding chubby toddlers. And Iâm happy for them, I am. Iâm just happy from the outside of the circle, looking in.
My best friend, her husband, and their insanely terrific two-year-old came to New York to visit me last weekend. Spending time with this baby, this living, squirting, bubbling representation of their collective selves wasnât just fun (and exhausting), it was good for my soul. I got the inside peek at what itâs like to be a mom and for the first time, it didnât seem like a completely alien concept to me. In fact, it seemed almost do-able…eventually.
Then I think about having a child who will never meet my own mother. Never hear her off-pitch singalongs to Bonnie Raitt, never see her eyes crinkle in the corners when she makes a particularly funny (read: corny) joke, never taste her lemon meringue pie. And it makes me sadâŠbut not sad enough to not have that child, to adore them, whisper to them first thing in the morning and last thing at night how much I love them, how Iâll always love them, how theyâre everything to me. Because thatâs what my mom did for me.
And I know she was right.