Mothering

Oscar had another great day. I am so pleased when he’s had three visits in one day, and today Matt and I traded off seamlessly. We have gotten pretty good at this routine, and it bodes well for us in the future I think. It takes a lot of cooperation to keep three boys contented all day. Especially when one is Oscar and not home. So I love the days when we are a team managing this special circumstance together with no outside help. Its hard, but it feels good and satisfying in a way that is unique. Oscar didn’t gain too much last night, another 8 grams or so, but its still something. He is breathing like a star, and pooping like its his job. I mean honestly, you would not believe the diapers this wisp of a boy generates. That also bodes well for us. The insides are working, the outsides are fattening up. We’re getting there.
My niece Sophie and my nephews Zachary and Ethan came to the hospital today to see Oscar through the window. It was special for all of us I think, and seeing the wonder in their eyes as they took Oscar in was gratifying to say the least. I really felt like the happy, proud mom I am. And all of the fun ahead for these children warms my heart, really. I am so glad that our children are all growing very close to one another. It was one of the biggest reasons we moved to New Canaan. Its been even better than we had imagined, and I know the kids will be in each others’ lives the way my own cousin Cecilia is in mine. We are sisters more than anything else. And it was our parents who saw to it that we spent time together. Not a small feat when she lived in Sweden and I here in the US. But here we are, knitted together inextricably. I truly want that for my kids and all their cousins. You can never have enough family in my opinion.
Times like this make you think a lot about family. How much you need them to get through something so trying. From my vantage point, you can get through anything with people around who love you. In that regard I am doing great. Man, I miss my mom though. And that’s not to say that the family and friends who are the very glue keeping my sanity together right now are any less important than they are. That is immutable. But I wonder if strangers, nurses, people at large see in my eyes the sorrow I feel right now.
As every person who has lost a parent or loved one knows, you are forever changed. For years I could wake up and have 15 minutes where I didn’t remember she had died. Then 10, then 5. Now it just is. I can’t reboot back to that me I used to be. I know I lost some sweet part of myself over the last 15 years. And I know I gained enormous strength and a capacity to withstand challenges that was hard earned over years of mothering myself. But it seems to me (and I’m biased, and hindsight is 20/20, and yes I have rose colored glasses on) that the way one navigates these waters is with your mom at the wheel.
In some metaphorical way, she is. I could never be the mother she was, with her grace, humor, and generosity. So I channel her as best I can. I’m pretty bad at it truth be told. I can fake a good game, but I struggle to stay positive and upbeat. She never did. Its so ironic how life repeats itself. Here I am, without her, as she was without her own mother (my grandmother died when she was 33 at the age of 57). I have no sisters, my aunts are very far away, my cousins overseas, in the female sense pretty alone. And she too was so far from all the women, whom she had in spades but couldn’t access. So I marvel at her ability to smile through it all, and my ongoing list of questions I never get to ask her is longer than ever.
Just when I think I am all cried out, the tears sting my eyes yet again. If I linger too long on the thoughts I can come unglued all together. And the worst part is how sad I think she must be, looking down on us needing her as much as we do right now, and being unable to come through the door, flowers in hand and start about the business of putting us all back together the way only your mom can.