Mothers, Daughters and Life Running Through

Goodness there’s a mess of emotions chasing around inside me this morning. I hate it when that happens. I have a big day ahead of me with all kinds of things to look after and here I am frozen by this huge glob of stuff that sits in the pit of my stomach wanting to be heard. I’m already a week behind in getting going in this darn University course I registered for. Trying to get myself to pick up my text book has been like trying to get milk out of a chicken.

I kind of wish I hadn’t rescued the book out of the bath tub. At least then I’d have an excuse. Maybe what I need to do is what I used to do with my kids. The old, “you’ll get this once you’ve done that” - kind of thing. “Eat all your supper and you can have some ice cream.” “Do all your homework, then you can go play outside.” The words for me today would be – “Get caught up in your course then you can let go of the “should’s” that are weighing you down”. Blah, blah, blah, nag, nag, nag.

Beating myself up won’t help nor will trying to dodge my way around whatever is biting at my heels demanding my attention right now. All that does is tie knots in my gut and squeeze my heart a little tighter. I might as well try to write my way through it and see if I can poke my nose out the other side. I can’t verbalize what’s bugging me because the words aren’t there yet but if I keep writing I know it will eventually drop out of me. It’s kind of like unearthing the worms when I dig around in the garden to loosen the soil. I know the critters are there but I’m not aware of them until I root them up. I know my answer is there and I’m not aware of what it is but if I keep writing it will surface somewhere, somehow.

Transition is the word that keeps popping up. Evolution. Expansion. Growth. Change. Maybe even a milestone. All words that come to me as I try to assimilate what’s going on in my psyche. As I try to find my footing on this slippery moss covered rock of life. I see time moving forward as I watch my two youngest daughters say some tearful goodbyes to each other as one makes a long desired move from Calgary, Alberta to Pemberton, BC and the other stays behind.

And I feel my footing shift a little with the birthday card from my oldest daughter and my two grandchildren that I get in the mail. The kind I used to send to my mother along with the special drawing or note from her grandchildren, my daughters. And as I hear about my girls bawling as they said their goodbyes and parted ways last night, my heart feels for them. I feel those tears as my mind slips back to when my sister left the area we both lived in to make her move to BC. I felt overjoyed for her yet I felt an emptiness surround me as I touched the edge of a milestone I did not yet understand and I had no one to share it with and I felt so alone.

I am grateful that they have someone in their life to witness and hold them through their tears but I can still feel the muscles of my heart clutch a little tighter as I connect with their journey of growth, change and transitions. A journey that is a very necessary part and parcel of life and of moving on.

It is a strange place to be when I feel their sadness and I find myself wanting to pull them under my wing, hold them close and make it all better for them whenever something touches their lives. It is an emotional tug of war. I am thrilled for them. I am sitting at the bottom of the mountain cheering them and clapping my hands as they climb their way to the top. I have no doubt at all that they will make it there and that they will learn what they are meant to learn along the way. Yet as I watch them step forward I can’t help but hold my breath wanting to save them from scraped knees and bruised hearts that may also be part of the journey.

I can’t though. It’s not my role anymore, not like it once was anyway. All I can do now is hold them close in my heart and know and affirm that they will find their own way. I was listening to one of Wayne Dyer’s talk on a CD yesterday and he said something I’ve always said too. “We don’t own our children”. Every mother knows this on some level and those who have lost a child perhaps know this on an even deeper level. But, “once a mother, always a mother”, no matter how much time passes or what changes take place along the way.

Change can and very often does hold moments of sadness but it also holds newness, growth, joy and many other good things - things we never thought possible or that could never happen without the forward motion, evolution, and change of today. Just me, standing on my rock of life through writing.

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