Honoring our mums


MAY IS THE MONTH in which Americans, (along with several other nationalities), celebrate Mother’s Day. In my homeland, England, Mother’s Day has come and gone, having been celebrated in March.

This year, I consider myself very lucky, because the woman I call the ‘mother of my heart’ will be visiting me in California. Although I already honored her once this year, with flowers sent via the Net to England a couple of months back, I am really thrilled to be getting a second chance to show this amazing woman what she means to me.

What will make this Mother’s Day all the more poignant for me is that my own mother, who died two years ago, will not be around for me to honor also. I wish that it were different. Like many people, I never fully realized how much I would miss my mum till she was gone.

If you ever read my article Poisoned By My Own Perceptions – a Daughter’s Tale, which was published in PLW a few years back, you will have some understanding of the difficulties I had relating to my own mother growing up. Sad to say, that article is not necessarily a good reflection on me… although it is an honest one. Thankfully, I did get a few years in which to experience a different kind of relationship with my mum than the one we had shared throughout most of my life. Though whether she was able to appreciate that difference is debatable, since, physically and mentally, she had become a mere shadow of her former self, owing to several strokes.

Many years ago I read a line in a novel that really pulled me up sharp. One of the characters, a woman who seemed to have no connection whatsoever with her own daughter, said: “Sometimes the child of your body is not the child of your heart.” It was during a time when my relationship with my own mum was really going through one of its most difficult phases. So as you can imagine, that line was really loaded with meaning for me. Particularly as, in stark contrast, my relationship with my mother in law – the “Mother of my heart” was (and still is), one of the most precious, supportive, unconditionally loving relationships of my life.

Perhaps I should explain here that the quality and closeness of my relationship with my mother-in-law is all the more remarkable because her son and I have been divorced for almost 28 years now!

I once said that everything I learned about love, I learned, not from my own mother, but rather, from the example of my mother-in-law and father-in-law who, no matter what mistakes I made (and believe me I made many!) never once judged me or turned their backs on me.

I never thought, until I wrote that confessional article about my mother, that I had learned anything about love or motherhood from her. I was wrong. My mother-in-law made it easy for me to love her because she never once criticized me, or measured me in any way whatsoever. The same could not always be said about my own mother.

My mother-in-law engendered loyalty, respect, consideration, and enormous love and affection in me because that was what she gave out – consistently, unfailingly and unconditionally. The same could not always be said about my own mother.

Some years back, when interviewing men for a book I was writing about how to understand the opposite sex, I asked an ex-boyfriend of mine what it was that men really wanted from women. Just like that other line in the novel I mentioned earlier, his response, which was uttered with a completely straight face and absolute conviction, made a huge impact on me. He said, and I quote: “I’ll tell you want men want, Sandie. They want a woman who will love them unconditionally, forgive them endlessly… and never, ever, ask for anything back.”

Now, we have a word in England that, for me, really expresses what it means to be stunned into jaw-dropping silence. That word is gob-smacked. (Gob is English slang for mouth. Ergo, to be “gob-smacked” means to look and feel as if someone has just unexpectedly smacked you in the mouth.) That remark definitely left me “gob-smacked”. When I was finally able to recover my composure and close my mouth, I said to him: “So what you are telling me is that what men really want is their mum. Because the only people I know who love us unconditionally, forgive us endlessly… and never, ever asks for anything back are our mothers."

There were two things that struck me at that moment. One minor, one major. (The minor one was that I now understood why he was no longer my boyfriend!) The major revelation was that, whether we recognize it or not, this is precisely what most mothers do – they love us unconditionally, they forgive us endlessly, and rarely do they ever ask for anything other than our happiness in return.

With that knowledge came the realization that, with few exceptions, mothers are the world’s true heroes. Now that I am a mum myself, I can appreciate all the more keenly the tremendous unconditional love that most mothers have for their children. Too late, I came to understand that my mum truly did love me; she just didn’t know how to show it in a way that, at that time, had meaning for me.

The day I finally got that my mother loved me for certain was the day she said that she never begrudged the obvious great love I had for my mother-in-law. On the contrary, she said, she could only find tremendous gratitude in her heart that I had found someone who could fulfill for me all the emotional needs that she had not been able to fulfill. With that one comment, my mother gave me the greatest gift that anyone can give to another person… she showed me that she loved me enough to free me from the guilt of bonding with another woman in a way that I had never bonded with her.

What my mother taught me that day was that a mother’s love comes in many guises. Sometimes it does not come in an easily recognizable form. Sometimes it does not come in the way we expect it to come. Sometimes the way it comes is not the way we want it to come, but is actually the way we need it to come in order to shape us in such a way that enables us to fulfill our destinies.

Growing up, I rarely got what I wanted from my mother. But looking back, I realize I did get exactly what I needed.

Don't you think this world would be a much better place if we could all learn to feel for one another the depth and breadth and purity of the unconditional love that springs from a mother’s heart?

And if we could do that, wouldn't it be the very best thing we could do to honour our mothers?

Happy mother’s day - even if you are not a mother!

Be well, be love, be loved,