dear friends,
Mother’s Day has a lot of different flavors for me. It started out as an uncomplicated celebration of my mom: it was the day my brother and I made cards and served her breakfast in bed — she never let on that the omelet was cold and overcooked, or the strawberries weren’t quite ripe. Then, in my late twenties, Mother’s Day became difficult. I miscarried at almost 19 weeks before eventually getting pregnant with my daughter and miscarried again at 11 weeks before eventually becoming pregnant with my son. And, ten years ago, my mom passed away after a long decline into Alzheimer’s. When this time of year rolls around, I feel a swirl of emotions.
This is all my way of saying that I understand those relish every single moment of the day and those who don’t like it at all.
After experiencing the Käthe Kollwitz exhibit at MoMA last week (I’ll explain below), I realized that there is a way of creating a beautiful space that can hold all of this. Instead of the sugary version sold to us by those with a profit motive, I prefer to think of Mother’s Day in the non-commercialized way its founder Anna Jarvis did: a day to honor the wise women who have cared for us.
So, in that spirit, I’m sharing a few lessons I learned from my mom as a dedication to wise women who care for us everywhere—those who came before us, those who are here now, and those yet to come.
The Käthe Kollwitz exhibit, on display at MoMA until July 20th, is as much full of beauty as it is sorrow. Kollwitz lived through two World Wars. Her work focused on motherhood, and also of grief and resistance. The female point of view, she maintained, is a necessary and powerful agent for change. And when I started to think about the lessons my mother taught me, I realized that like Kollwitz’s work, those lessons are about caring through all life, not just the moments that make for shareable photos on social media or pretty advertising campaigns.
So, here are three of the lessons I learned from my mom:
(1) Everything looks better in the light of day. As a kid, I had slight (okay, maybe more than slight) over-achieving tendencies. I’m not exactly sure how old I as when I started waking up in the middle of the night in a panic, but I remember my mom coming into my dark bedroom one night, gently rubbing my back to help me to fall back asleep, and whispering, “Sweetheart, it’s going to be okay. I promise you, everything will look better when the sun comes up.”
When I was in school, her words were almost always true. Whatever I was worrying about most certainly would to turn out okay. In the adult world, it is sometimes harder to believe that. I’m not going to dive into a deep philosophical argument here about the what constitutes turning out okay or the pros and cons of a positive mindset. Instead I want to focus on the second part of my mom’s advice: the reminder that when we’re staring into the blackness of night, our worries and fears seem solid and permanent. In naming that middle-of-the-night anxiety, and telling it to wait until later, she taught me that no matter what the fear, you can face it on your own terms and when you’re ready. And, of course, she was absolutely right that pretty much every problem does looks less scary when the sun is up.
(2) A little thoughtfulness goes a long way. My mom sent just-because cards to friends going through rough patches, she put a small vase of hand-picked flowers on the nightstand for a houseguest, she remembered everyone’s favorite foods (and would make them, even the time-consuming ones), she wrote thank you notes. And when she taught me to write them, her advice to my frustrated child self who couldn’t find the right words was that it didn’t really matter exactly what I said. What mattered was that I said thank you so that the person I was writing my note to could feel my gratitude. As a kid, I argued that it was impossible to feel grateful for a gift I didn’t like. She explained to me that liking the gift was a nice bonus, but not the reason for feeling grateful. You feel grateful because another human being took the time/effort/money to do something kind for you. As soon as I could see that truth, writing the notes got easier and so did feeling grateful.
At her memorial, person after person shared stories of small kindness she had done. I stress the word small, because, really, they were mostly small things, but the impact was anything but. Your days are packed. It’s easy to let the rational voice in your head tell you that sending that card or forwarding the interesting article won’t make any difference and, anyway, you don’t have the time. Push back against that voice: the little thing does matter and you do (in all probability) have a few extra moments in your day to let someone else know that they matter.
(3) You can always add beauty to your surroundings. My family moved around a lot. In fifth grade, I went to three different schools in three different languages in two different countries. We weren’t wealthy, and looking back I appreciate how hard it must have been for my mom to create comfort and beauty wherever we lived, but she did. She repurposed and up-cycled decades before those words joined our shared vocabulary. The lesson she taught me was that no matter where we lived, it was worthwhile to create beauty in our environment.
I get that there are far more important things in life than aesthetics. Setting a nice table, planting flowers, taking an extra two minutes in the morning to make the bed are not important things. When there is a real conflict, there’s no doubt that substance should win out over style, but much of the time there isn’t a real conflict. It’s more a matter of thinking that adding a little beauty doesn’t matter. But, to return to that memorial ten years ago, I was stunned by the number of people who told me not only that they remembered that my mom did all those unimportant things, but that they loved her for creating those spaces because it made them feel cared for and about.
And that’s it for today. I hope you enjoy this Sunday, whether as a holiday our society recognizes or as a quiet moment to reflect, with a grateful heart, on the women who have cared for and about you throughout your life.
warmly,
alison
