Mothers – Rant and Roll

Can you imagine, momma?

When I lived with my mum we talked about a lot of things: old boyfriends, jobs, sex, politics, family, cancer, growing up in the Maritimes.

Strangely, the one thing we didn’t talk about was death. Maybe because it was always just there, hanging about our day to day. Curling the corners of all other conversations, colouring our lives with the faintest, but most discernible of hues.

I can remember one night sitting in her kitchen. It was the beginning of October and while we could feel the faint scratch of autumn’s fingertips, we still laughed as we turned on her little electric fireplace.

My mother sat with her tiny frame engulfed in an oversized white knit sweater, her hand loosely curled around a glass of red wine.

“If you don’t have children, that’s totally fine with me,” she said. “You and Marc don’t have to have a baby.”

I had been talking to her about the fact that I didn’t know if I wanted to have kids, and the fact that I was struggling with my indecision. I had always assumed that as I got older something would just click inside of me and I would suddenly want to have a baby.

“That’s what happened to you, isn’t it?” I asked her. “How you knew you wanted kids?”

My mother nodded as she tried to work out of a piece of food from her teeth. “I just woke up one day and knew I wanted a baby. That it was something I needed in my life,” she said.

“See?” I said. “That’s what I’m looking for.”

I shifted in my seat as I told her that my waffling was also something that worried me in terms of my relationship with Marc. How my husband definitely wanted kids, and when we got married, I had assured him that it was something that would happen – not right away, but yes, definitely, someday.

But there I was, early thirties, still hoping for that “a ha!” moment that I had been so sure would happen when I made him those promises – to spend the rest of my life with him, and that our life would at some point include another little life that we would make together.

“I worry about what it could do to us,” I told her. “If I end up not wanting kids.”

She looked at me with her discerning eye, before taking a sip of her wine.

“It’s something you’ll get through,” she offered. “But as I said – I can imagine it.”

I didn’t have a response to this. I just shifted in my seat, again, hoping that perhaps I could adjust my discomfort as easy as I could my body.

What is funny – and completely devastating – about this memory and conversation with my mother, is that I can without a doubt pinpoint the exact moment when I knew that I wanted – nay, needed – to have a child.

It was four days after she had been admitted to the hospital. Marc and I were driving back from her house to spend the afternoon and evening with her. I was in the passenger side of the car – her car – and I felt a sudden surge of grief pour over and through me.

These emotional tsunamis had been happening since I first received a text from my sister at 5:40 in the morning telling me an ambulance was on its way.

Most of the time it would feel as though I was going to explosively vomit up my heart. Like my skin was a gaping wound, my entire body over. Like the only thing I could possibly do was cry and scream at the entire ugly, stupid world until I turned to dust.

But this time, instead, I just looked down. I looked down into my lap and there, in my hands, saw the entirety of my love for my mother.

A tangible, pulsing, incandescent love.

Its warmth soothing my broken skin, its strong beat calming the mania of my heart.

And that was it.

That’s when I knew. That there was no other option but to put that love somewhere, into a tiny little life, made by Marc and me.

And then I cried. Great, heaping tears of love and loss – of the greatest happiness, of my boundless relief and a most infinite sadness.

They are the same tears I shed when wee Elanor Marie was welcomed by the world last August. When we now dance together, slowly in the early afternoon sun. When she reaches for my face as I kiss her cheeks and ears and lips and eyes.

When I watch as she marvels at the wide world over.

When I wish with all of my heart that my mum could be here.

That she could imagine all of this, too.

The beauty of your day, momma

Hi Momma.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Today is beautiful – sunny, and warm – a day where the sky seems to stretch forever, and the trees all vibrate with a green one shade away from surreal.

The world always seems to shine a little brighter on your day.

Momma, it’s Mother’s Day and I am just past 7 months pregnant. I sometimes get really scared that I won’t know how to be a momma because you aren’t here anymore.

I can’t phone you when I’m worried about things (silly or serious) or ask you about pregnancy symptoms.

(At week 28 did it feel like someone did a wind-up soccer kick straight to your right groin?)

We can’t share stories, laughs and tears as I muddle my way through this wonderful and bizarre journey.

And you can’t come and visit me after this wee babe is born. To hold and to sing to them.

To continue to share stories, laughs and tears.

Sometimes I get so jealous of other women who are newly pregnant or mums themselves – both friends and strangers – who get this chance.

In these moments it feels like I have lightning in my belly and sand in my eyes and I want to scream, “You don’t know how lucky you are!”

What’s funny is that, in order to get myself out of this space, I have to do my yoga breathing (the yoga breathing you taught me to do, over and over and over again).

Momma, you are with me when I am upset about not having you.

That’s a pretty good trick you have.

Momma, it’s also that I am blessed to know so many amazing mums who are keeping close and showing me many beautiful examples of motherhood.

They also help clear the sand from my eyes.

Four of these mothers are also my sisters:

Jessi, who has the strength of a tiger, the endurance of an ostrich and the iron will of a wolf, so that no matter what is happening in the world – micro or macro – she leads and loves like a warrior. (I’ll let you guess which of these animals is also representative of her beauty.)

Kate, whose patience and calm floor me each and every day, whose quiet and understated, but never underrepresented, compassion and kindness has brought me back from the brink too many times to count, and who sees the gentle beauty and humour in everything.

Mel, whose big heart burns with such a tangible love, you swear you can see it colour the corners of a room – a magic only matched by her creativity and unique characteristics that leave her kids (and everyone else) is stitches.

Vanessa, who radiates a love and an authenticity so nurturing and nourishing, she makes it impossible to feel alone or like you’ve done something wrong. (She also brings this light to the world on a chronic lack of sleep, which makes her words, laughter and heart ever the more special.)

So there you go momma.

It’s Mother’s Day.

Thanks for helping me see the beauty of your day.

And the beauty of all mothers just a little brighter too.

Happy birthday momma. It’s a party.

Today is my momma’s birthday.

She would have been 70.

The last time I visited her, in February of 2018, I asked her, “what do you want to do for your 70^th? Maybe we could do something as a family – like go on a trip together or organize a big party?”

I remember she was flossing her teeth – something she took very seriously. She paused before looking straight at me.

“If I even make it that long,” she laughed half-heartedly.

Her comment left me upended – as though I had just missed a step at the bottom of a staircase.

I had somehow kept believing that – despite the stage four metastasized breast cancer – she would live forever.

It was the first time I heard her acknowledging the opposite. Her words were like a knife to my heart.

“Of course you will make it!” I blurted out, wanting desperately to erase this subtle, yet momentous shift that had just occurred.

She shrugged and went back to flossing her teeth.

I went to bed dreaming of a birthday party abroad.

…

When I talk about my mum, which I do all the time, it’s always to marvel at and impress upon just how well, and how often she lived.

It’s why I had such a hard time imagining her dying – and why I have such a hard time remembering that she is dead – because no matter how sick she got, she never stopped.

She never stopped working, and she never stopped working out; doing yoga and volunteering; helping with her grandkids and with her daughters’ professional and personal pursuits.

She hosted the most brilliant and boisterous dinner parties, marched in solidarity with other women, challenged herself to know more about reconciliation and how to be a better ally. Debated her friends who held competing views. Loved and nurtured and believed in the incredibly unique and beautiful community that she built and that she held close in her heart.

It is these people who have consistently reached out to myself and my sisters over the past year. On Mother’s Day, Christmas, the day of her death. To tell me: I see you. I am hurting too. I miss her. I miss and think of her every day.

I get so angry sometimes, thinking of others who have remained silent and conspicuously so. I feel like I have been cut off, like a gangrenous limb. Severed from a family who no longer thinks or feels about her, or her daughters, or what it’s like to live every day without your North Star. And the painful journey of reorientation that reminds me every day: she died.

Especially on days like today.

But then I hear a gentle voice at the back of my head: a voice that pipes up, mid-floss, reminding me to hold close the community that she held in her heart. Because those are the people who held her.

And to celebrate today.

So happy birthday, momma. I know you’re somewhere beautiful.

And that’s it’s a party.

This moment. This.

When I was thirteen years old, I started going to bed with ropes and scarves tied tightly around my waist, believing that it would stop me from gaining weight in my sleep.

I would tie them so tightly that they would cut into my skin, forming a ridge of angry red scars along the tops of my hipbones and the small of my back.

I don’t know how my mother found out about what I was doing, but she did.

Obviously horrified and desperate to get me to stop, she was sensitive enough to know that depending on how she broached the subject, I might shrink further inside of myself.

So her approach was simple.

Instead of getting angry with me, or throwing out all of the things I used to harm myself, she would wait until I had gotten ready for sleep, and then gently knock on my bedroom door.

Sitting on the side of my bed, she would stroke my hair and softly ask if I had wrapped anything around my waist.

I would squirm and fight, never wanting to admit that I had, or confess how ugly and hated I felt on nights when I couldn’t bring myself to bind my skin.

Sometimes she would ask to see my stomach, although never in a confrontational or accusatory way. In a way that ached with a stark and simple love and sadness. The heartbreaking futility of knowing that your teenage daughter finds such monumental faults in the skin that you helped make and shape.

After I had either showed her my bare skin, or grudgingly removed the ties, she would take my hand in hers and ask me to tell her one thing that I loved about myself.

For many nights I dreaded this moment. A slight, cold sweat would break out on the back on my neck. I would push my face into my pillow and half-heartedly murmur something into its folds; gnash my teeth and force out a canned answer.

“The A on my math test,” was my garbled response.

But she would sit there, patient as a stone as I wrestled with the question, until finally, exhausted, I would whisper a truth.

“I love my hair.”

“I’m funny.”

“My friends.”

Even after I stopped going to bed with the scarves, my mother would come see me. Stroke my hair. Hold my hand. And ask me:

“Tell me one thing you love about yourself.”

As I grew older, I forgot about this nightly ritual. I left home, adopted new routines, and practiced new methods of self care.

But every so often, when my anxiety is particularly high, and I wake in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, I lie in bed, and breathe deeply.

And I imagine my mothers hand on mine, the tone of her voice, soothing.

And I tell her.

My hair.

I’m funny.

This moment.

This.

Dear Momma: Here’s what happened in 2018

Hi Momma.

I know we talk a lot, but I wanted to take some time to lay out everything that’s happened since the beginning of March. It’s been such a busy, heartbreaking, extraordinary time.

Most mornings I wake up and forget that you’re not here.

Sometimes you’ll have visited me in my dreams – your way of stopping by and saying hello. I get glimpses of your life in New York or you’ll tell me about the old classmates of yours that you’ve decided to haunt.

I see your smile and hear your laugh and I when I touch you, it’s real.

Momma, I feel like I could pull you back into life.

Your magic, it burns brightly, everywhere.

You died on Thursday, March 8^th. International Women’s Day.

I was holding your hand while Suzan Maclean held the other. I think that she, like me, doesn’t really believe in a world without you.

The day I flew back home, I took a lot of your clothes. I took your light blue jean jacket and your tight black pants. That striped heart sweater that you bought in Brooklyn and your gray crop-top turtleneck.

A few of your sweaters still smell like you. Sometimes I hold them and breathe deeply.

Because I wear your clothes every day, all of my friends are obsessed with your style.

Many of them also have your postcard pinned up in their offices. They tell me that you inspire them to take risks, to wear colour, to try something new.

Hearing this and writing this makes me cry.

In April I joined a gym to learn how to get strong. You would have laughed because when I went in for my assessment, I couldn’t even do one squat. But working slowly and intentionally with my trainer Jules I have developed a new-found respect and appreciation for my body.

And I am getting strong.

Last week I deadlifted ninety kilograms. That’s one hundred and ninety-eight pounds! I know you’re probably thinking, “I just got her to stop running marathons through the mountains, and now she’s doing this?”

But you know that it’s your spirit that drives me.

Thanks for that Momma.

I am sorry to say that I’m still not doing yoga but I do keep your beautiful bag in my office so that I see it every day. When I do start a regular practice, you will, of course, be the first to know.

I’ve started seeing a wonderful grief counsellor who has helped and continues to help me so much. I was seeing her every week and now go about once a month. I also have an amazing “grief community” here in New West, made up beautiful, strong and inspiring women.

You would love every one of them.

They are often who I call when I’m can’t drive because I’m crying too hard, or when I’m paralyzed by grief in some grocery breakfast aisle, or when just the thought of living in this world without you is too overwhelming for words.

Their love helps me.

So does that of my friends. And of Kate and Jessi. Marc.

They all hold me close when all of my pieces are breaking apart.

I cry almost every day.

I hope this doesn’t make you sad. Because I know that the only reason it hurts this much is because of the depth and the beauty of our love.

I think a lot about this when I run. There is a tree down at the river boardwalk here in New Westminster that I call “The Momma Tree”. It reminds me so much of you because of its vibrant colours and delicate leaves. Every time I run by it, I whisper a hello to you and high-five your branches.

Your magic, it burns brightly, everywhere.

This November I ran the Fall Classic 10k and placed ninth. It was one of the harder races I’ve run because I had just had gum surgery two weeks prior and couldn’t exercise at all in the lead up, because it might disturb my graft and slow my recovery.

Not to point fingers, but this gum recession is definitely genetic and it’s definitely from your side of the family.

At first I was so disappointed and I cried at the finish line. I’ve been chasing the elusive sub-40 time for so long and I felt so tired of trying and failing. But Marc held me and helped me.

I know you’ve always loved how delicate he is with me.

Here are some other things that have happened this year, so much with our strength and love:

In May, I attended my first New Westminster Community and Social Issues Council Committee meeting. That same month I also started working on my first municipal political campaign, helping my incredible friend Nadine Nakagawa get elected to city council.
In June, I presented at Pecha Kucha and spoke about you and grief and love and compassion. Marc and I celebrated our ten year wedding anniversary.
In July, I filmed my favourite story of the year at the Sharing Farm in Richmond. In total this year, I wrote over 70 stories for United Way and shot 15 videos.
In August, we welcomed beautiful Loic Stewart to the world, and I have loved every moment of being his aunty. I pour love into him. Just like you did with us.
In September, I joined the New Westminster Hospice Society’s board of directors. I was the first woman up Grouse Mountain for United Way’s Tech Grind, even though I couldn’t officially compete. (Yes Momma, I am that competitive.) I hosted a fun night of improv with a local feminist collective, MCed a wedding with twelve hours notice and managed to take another selfie with my mayor and council after presenting about United Way Day.
In October, I moderated the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce’s All Candidates Debate which was exhilarating and if there is just one thing I wish I could have had you there for, this was it. I started my Compassionate City Crew training with New West Hospice and hosted a very fun Halloween dinner party. You would have loved Marc’s and my costume – I was a lawyer and he was the devil, so we were The Devil’s Advocate.
In November, I took a stand against racism in my city, attended the annual civic dinner, completed my hospice training, moderated a panel on brand building and philanthropy, shared a story at The Flame about my absurd decision to get eyelash extensions and hiked around Whistler with Marc for our anniversary.
This month there are story performances and holiday get-togethers and both Kate and Jessi are making your gingerbread and I can’t stop crying whenever I sing along to the Barra MacNeils’ Christmas albums.

Just know that I think about you every day. I miss you every day. I see you in a soft rose gold sunset. In the wind that blows the hair from my face. In my dark roots that always grow in no matter how often I dye my hair blond.

You’re the blood in my veins, the green in my eyes. My smile. My laugh. My long legs and cold hands.

Momma, I carry you close.

And I will never stop missing you.

I wrote you this letter even though I know you know all of this.

Because you’re in the sky.

Sea. Land.

Air.

Mommm. Momma. Momma.

You and your magic are everywhere.