Mother's Day

Tomorrow will be Mother's Day.

I've never liked mother's day particularly. Really has always seemed a contrived sort of deal. Either Mom knows you love her or she doesn't. You tell her or you don't. More importantly, you demonstrate it... Or you don't. Buying flowers, a cheesy card, and a meal once a year just isn't it. Really.

In my situation, Mother's Day puts me up against the way my life is, and to tell the truth, that is a reality check that I just don't need.

I find myself, as Mother's Day is upon me again, pondering the Lakota Sioux prayer I learned from one of the "teachers" life sent my way so many years ago -- "mitakyasi." It means "all my relations," and is meant to remind us that we are entirely part of all there is. By "all my relations," the Lakota mean, quite literally ALL things and all beings. Our "relations" are not just parents and siblings, grandparents and aunts and uncles. Our relations are our neighbors and our surroundings, our pathways and our communities. "Mitakyasi," means I am part, I am responsible, I belong, I make this, this makes me... It is all and all. A prayer that is simultaneously of humility and glory.

And so, I cannot help but inventory "all my relations:"

Master. The One who brought me to this place with His command; who loves me; who drives me higher and farther and deeper than I ever imagined. He is my love, and my owner, and my friend, and my confidant. He aggravates me, and makes me laugh, and makes me safe, and makes me weep. He is my heart, and my soul. The destiny I was meant to find.

T. My sister-heart -- the one that I grew up longing for in a life filled with brothers. She is the one who is forever on the lookout for goodies, for presents, for the things that will make me smile. She is the one who opened her heart, her home, her whole world -- to make space for me. Whatever happens, no matter how tired, or weird, or crazy it might get, I know my sister will be right there, right beside me.

Mother. The woman who bore me into this world. She has always been the one I have looked at with longing -- wishing that someday she would look back and see me, and just want me. Just once. She is the meanest human I have ever known: simply incapable of giving or connecting with anyone not herself. Still.

My son, Rick. My first born. He came into my life at a time when I was so awfully young, and so terribly naive and unformed. I held him in my arms and promised to raise a man that I could be proud of. He is that. Throughout his childhood, he watched me battle my way through the minefields of the corporate culture that I inhabited in those days. Watched it consume my time, my energy, my health. Too, he watched, with his serious, quiet child's eyes, the silent war that ensued between his father and I. Both things shaped him in profound ways. He is today a good, decent, kind, thoughtful, open, honest and caring man. He works for far less than he might because he will not be captured as I was. He is approaching his wedding in September with the woman he has been with for 10 years. No rush to commitment for my sweet boy... ever cautious.

My daughter, Sarah. My lovely, violet eyed, strawberry-blonde baby. Bright and damaged from the very start. I knew, almost immediately that Sarah was not like other children. For years and years, I sought the answers that would tell me what it was that made her different, but so many years ago, no one had said, "Asperger's," and it was rare that bipolar illness was diagnosed in young teens. Always, I'd be told that she was merely "bright." When things began to fall apart in her 5th grade year, there were no answers outside of the juvenile justice system, and a poor excuse for mental health care that was really just a way to milk whatever insurance coverage we had at the time. In time, things devolved to increasing levels of criminal behavior until Sarah found herself on an endless cycle of rounds that took her in and out of the prison system. Mostly, I don't blame myself. Mostly.

Brothers. I had three. Hank, Gregg, Kurt. All younger. Kurt never calls and I don't call him. Long story. A lot of years between us age wise. Too much difference in experience, I suppose. No one's fault. We just don't really know each other. Gregg died of HIV AIDS 14 years ago. I miss him terribly. Hank lives far away. Doesn't understand. Tries to be "tolerant," but we haven't got much space to stand together on, and he aligns with mother most of the time. A choice.

My kids. In my classes. They come and go every year. I've learned to love them passionately and deeply, and then let them go. They don't belong to me. They are the world's children. They come into my life, take what I can give them and then journey on. Sometimes they look back as they head off to their lives, but not often. Sometimes they come back around. Doesn't matter. They are the work of my hands and my heart. Seeds planted in rows that I don't look back at.

Co-workers and colleagues. This year we will be scattering. The school will close. In a matter of weeks. All of us will go different ways. And it will all be like a dream. All the work, the shared efforts, the successes and the failures, and the stories. Gone. In the mist. New places and new stories. But "we" will be gone. Odd that.

The man who was my husband for so many years. He marries again. Soon, so my son tells me. That chapter ended finally. I wish him and them well. Odd sensation. More single still.

And the earth beneath my feet? Less strange seeming than it was. I am growing accustomed to the rhythms of this place. The way the springtime comes. The way the winter bites. The weight of the summer's heat. Not really mine yet. The place doesn't make my heart sing usually, but I can find joy in some of the places I see. It is where I live. It isn't where my roots are, still.

And you. Because you have come here, so many of you, and shared and read and returned, you too, are "all my relations."

Mitakyasi.

swan