Sunday will be Mother’s Day.

I have nothing against the holiday.

I like my breakfast in bed as much as the next mom.

Actually, I may like mine even a little more than the next mom as my children have grown increasingly skilled in the art of cooking.  I no longer have to endure sticky, smothered open-faced peanut butter toast served with a side of dripping-down-the-glass orange juice and an apple that has fallen off the plate twice before it made its way to my breakfast in bed tray.  I might actually get an omelet made to order with gouda cheese and chives and kiwi cut in a delicate pattern with a maple scone on the side.

I’ll enjoy my personally-designed-for-me Mother’s Day experience, I’m certain – but I’m not writing a post about my mom this mother’s day.

I really don’t have to.

Truly, Mother’s Day isn’t even the day I miss her most.

Mother’s Day is not the day I think about her and find my mouth agape at the realization of how many years it has been since I have seen her face or heard her laugh or listened to her tell one of her sort of terrifying work stories from the assisted living home where she worked as a nurse.  It’s not Mother’s Day when I wish she could see how big Mosely has grown and it’s not Mother’s Day when I think about phoning her to ask, just one more time, to please help me figure out how to mother an adult daughter.

Mother’s Day isn’t the hard one for me.  It really isn’t.

The hard days are random Tuesdays when I crack up at some ridiculous look and nearly-rude but entirely-funny phrase that Otto says to me.  The days when I find myself nearly desperate for the kind of affirmation only a mother knows how to dole out.  The missing her days are the days when I pick up an old bowl or a framed picture and I know, I know I should remember the story that belongs to that little artifact of family history but I just cannot remember it – and I know she is the only one who can.

It’s not Mother’s Day when I miss my mother.

It’s the every other days.

And not just the big ones.  Not just the graduations and the first day of kindergarten, but the rearranging the living room or the conquering a homemade meringue or the article published.

It’s the shared every day littles that add up to so much big loss.  The loose teeth and the kid art and the pets dying and the family decisions.

I miss shared lunches and shopping trips and games of Racko and Rummy and I even miss the way she insisted on cutting her own hair to save a couple of dollars.

Oh, Mom.  It’s not Mother’s Day when I feel your absence.  

It’s just every day.

_______________

Your absence has gone through me 
Like thread through a needle. 
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

-W.S. Merwin