It's the evening of Mothers Day; I spent much of it helping my husband fix a fence, I have wire grass cuts and ant bites on my wrists – and I'm feeling contented. My son lives in Canberra, and my daughter in New York, but I talked to both of them on the phone - and tomorrow when it's Sunday in Canada, I'll talk to my mother there. I'm lucky. Lucky to have two children, lucky to have had them both grow up to be adults I'm proud to know, lucky that technology allows us easy contact in between visits. Lucky that I still have my own parents, who are active, healthy, and also people I'm proud to know.
But I can't help thinking of the women who aren't feeling so contented today; the women for whom a celebration of motherhood must feel like salt in a wound. Thinking of friends & family who still grieve their inability to have children; who had to give up babies or were not allowed to acknowledge them as their own; who live in fear of the future because their children's lives have gone inexplicably, horribly wrong, or whose children's lives have ended in a car accident or in Afghanistan. And those going through their first Mothers Day after their own mother's death. Some of these women are relatives I never met, some are close to me, but my heart goes out to them all.
If you're wondering what this has to do with writing... well, everything. The first step in writing is putting yourself into someone else's life for a while. But even if you don't want to write, it's a healthy thing to do once in a while.
Happy Mothers Day, to everyone who's ever nurtured another human being.
Labels: Mother's Day; gratitude