Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. It’s always an awkward day for me. I am a parent, but not a Mom. I have a child, but she does not have a Mother.

Katherine, my (step) daughter, is 17. We’ve been together since she turned 10. Before that she had her real Mom, Rhonda. But Rhonda died just a few months before Katherine’s 10th birthday, and after that, I married Katherine’s Dad. It’s a lot for a kid to absorb. It’s also a lot for an adult to absorb.

Katherine and I have a good relationship. We’ve had to work on it though. We didn’t “fall in love” the way her Dad and I did. Our love for one another was more intentional. We learned to love one another. We looked for reasons to love one another. And we found them.

That’s not to say I wasn’t crazy about her when we met. I was. I remember thinking she was one of the coolest kids I‘d ever known. But it’s a different sort of relationship you build when there are more than 23 years difference in your age and there is no physical chemistry to bond you when the going gets rough.

I used to worry myself sick over whether or not I had the “mothering” instinct. After having lived by myself for nearly 10 years, I was fairly set in my ways. And my ways didn’t include watching The Lion King for the 100th time or stopping by McDonalds for a burger and fries. I tried to enjoy it. I tried to be caught up in the “wonder” of her excitement. But I often failed.

Thankfully, Katherine is a very mature kid and she always has been. Since I’ve known her I’ve been blown away, oh at least a hundred times, by her insight and understanding.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that she is really a kid. Often I look at her and think she has raised herself. I think she might be a very old soul, inside a child’s body, who is just waiting for the body to grow so she can fully express her wisdom. And she patiently endures our “parenting” while she waits for her body to grow.

The other day she picked Sam and I up from the airport after having stayed home alone for several days. Sam was doing a fair amount of passenger seat driving when she finally told him, “You know Dad. I’ve been driving for nearly a year now without you in the car. And I did get here to the airport without any help or advice from you whatsoever. But don’t worry about it – because I think your worrying is cute.”

See what I mean?

And sometimes I think she is raising me as well. I’ve learned so much from her in the last 7 years and it has come mostly from just watching.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that in spite of my somewhat suspect mothering instinct, the job of “raising Katherine” has been remarkably easy. Which is a good thing of course. Because if it had been really hard, who knows how things might have ended up.

And so on Mother’s Day, I have a lot to be grateful for, and yet it is typically a very awkward and uncertain day for me.

It’s a day on which I want to tell the whole world, “Yes! I am a Mother! I have a child! A daughter! You should meet her! She is so great!” I want to rejoice in the fact that I have been blessed with this amazing kid in my life, that I have been given the chance to be a Mom to this amazing kid even though I have never given birth to any children of my own.

But it’s also a day where Katherine finds herself feeling profoundly motherless. She knows I love her. She appreciates the role I play in her life. But on this day more than any other, she feels the deep and profound loss of knowing that her real Mother is dead. And on Mother’s Day of course, she wants to honor her Mom. And that is not me.

She gives me a small gift, and a non Mother’s Day card. And I accept, but feel like an imposter.

For the other 364 days of the year, things will be fine. I know this from experience.

But on this day, we’ll do this dance with one another to get through the day. She harbors her sadness, sheltering it from me because she doesn’t want me to be hurt. And I harbor my sadness, sheltering it from her because I don’t want her to feel it as a burden, or worse yet an obligation.

And the day passes.