Happy Birthday Mom!

Today is my mother’s birthday, and each year I really miss her more and more. Losing a parent is a loss that lingers, gently reminding in little things during your life-a song, finding a gift they gave you, remembering a trip, dusting off Christmas ornaments. When the memory comes back, it’s a dull ache, sometimes intense when you realize how long you have to wait to see them again.

As a woman, losing my mom makes me learn on my own about growing up and taking care of children. Sure I’ve got a great network of friends always willing to give advice, but there’s a conversation between mother and daughter that is special, daughters know that they can ask their mother ANYTHING. It starts when you are young and your mother starts teaching you about being a girl, explaining more to you as you stand on the threshold of being a woman, to the little things that make a great Mom. I wish I could ask her questions now about behavior, some simple like – was I this messy when I was growing up? Did I obsess the same way over something to the point of nausea? To the more complex type of questions, when did you start to go through The Change? How do you grow old gracefully?

Take some time as your New Year’s Resolution to sit and have a conversation with your mother. We always say talk to your grandparents, those elderly relatives – gain knowledge from them. There’s a special person there ready to talk about those things you may be too embarrassed to talk about, the one to help you be comfortable and provide that guidance in the process. Take out a piece of paper and sit with your mother and remember, ask her simple questions and write down the answers, videotape her answers if she’s comfortable with it, make a pot of coffee and really learn about her as a child, trials and tribulations into adulthood, what it means to be a parent.

There are many questions that pop up now, and I wish I could ask her. Her greatest gifts to me was that she was THE strongest woman I ever knew in my lifetime, so I just tuck those questions away and try every day to be the caring, strong, never give up, wonderful person that she was. Happy Birthday Mom, may your present be someone sitting with their mother and enjoying the bond that is mother/daughter.