Becoming My Mom

A series of posts honoring wilted flowers, handmade cards and breakfast in bed. Growing up, we could count on Mother’s Day to broadcast whose mother was dead or alive. As we stepped into church in our scuffed Mary Janes, we’d be greeted by ushers with an urgent whisper: “Is your mother living?” If we piped up “Yes!” we were awarded a bright pink carnation to wear all day. If we mumbled “no,” we were pinned with a white one to honor a lost mom. I used to watch the children and adults wearing those ghostly corsages and pray that day would never come for me. It did. I lost my Mom, Mary Finlayson, on May 29, 2006, and I can still feel her in my bones and hear her voice at every turn. For instance, today I am sure she would have called me from Florida to ask, “What are you wearing?” “Black, Mom. It’s New York.” And Mom would have chirped, “Oh, I guess that’s what they all wear there … but you look so much better in blue.” She’s right about that, as she was about a lot of things. It’s true that over time, we become our mothers. My hips are getting uneven like hers. I didn’t get her red hair, but I have bought it from time to time. Happily, I’ve inherited her sense of humor and her chutzpah as well as her bad habits. We both loved to finish everyone else’s sentences, since we knew what they were going to say anyway. My husband considers this particularly exasperating since I’m often wrong, but I can’t shake it now. Mom taught me how to eavesdrop, especially in restaurants. “Shh!” she’d urge, while tuning in to a spat in the neighboring booth, “They’re breaking up.” We’d continue to fake-chew while Mom muttered: “She’s better off, he’s such a jerk!” Mom and I had our own verbal shorthand. One of us would say “More” and the other would say “More” and then we’d talk faster and faster, “More, more, more!” It meant, “I love you more.” And we ended every phone call with the code for our closeness. We’d both put our hands on the receiver and say, “Hands on,” our signal that we were never really apart. But Mom and I were different too, certainly in matters of everyday empathy. Mom was a compassionate listener with a generous spirit. Me? I am a nice enough person but if I can’t fix an issue on the spot, I have to admit, I move on. With her wide-open heart, Mom was a magnet for people with problems, whether family, friends or anyone she met in the checkout line. Her solution for life’s bumps and bruises was to write a little letter to God. She’d grab any scrap of paper, date it and write, “Dear God” and sign “Thanks, Mary” and place the message inside her “God Box.” The goal was not necessarily resolution, but release. Writing it down and giving it over was the prize inside. Mom wrote about me a lot: my job, my stress, could I sell my apartment, would I have a baby? While she prayed, I pushed through promotions, through deals, even through infertility procedures. I figured that though Mom covered for me in the box, it was up to me to get it all done, even when I couldn’t. After Mom died, I missed her so much. I smacked into life without her, on my own against not just the daily dings, but breast cancer and my father’s sudden illness. I powered through my own surgery and radiation, but I couldn’t control the outcome of Dad’s decline, no matter how much I willed it. Finally, desperately alone, at his bedside, I picked up a pen and a piece of paper and wrote, “Dear God … and Mom.” I somehow felt her hand on mine, and knew it was her signal that I could let Daddy go. Six years have passed since I said goodbye to Mom. I long to hold her again, to show her that she lives on in me. I don’t know if my old parish will be handing out colored carnations at the door this Sunday. But if they gave me the choice, I’d ask for bright pink. After all, I am my mother’s daughter — and I’m still here.