Mother's Day

I made my first hike of the year yesterday afternoon. I went alone, which is usually how I entertain myself, regardless of where I am. Although it makes me a little sad—to be reminded that I didn’t have a companion to join me on this outing—I realized a long time ago that there are harsher truths in life than spending much of my time in sole pursuit.

As I made my way up and down the trail, which to my surprise was still blanketed with heavy drifts of now-dirty snow in areas where the sun hasn’t yet done its work, I passed several families—perhaps on a mother’s day outing. The last, a young couple dragging a stroller up the trail, prompted me to say to the young woman, “I guess ‘Happy mother’s day’ is in order”. “Thank you,” she replied, smiling. It seemed a little strange to be saying that to someone young enough to be my granddaughter, especially on a day where I was thinking about my own mother.

Earlier in the afternoon I had received an email from a friend. “I wish you a good mother’s day, yes, I know you´re not a mother but think about it there might be a little of a mother in you. Let´s hope so….” In church on this Sunday morning, the minister wished all of us a happy mother’s day, then proceeded to talk about masculine/feminine archetypes and male/female qualities that characterize each of us. “Interesting,” I answered my friend’s email—that you should acknowledge my nurturing ways, especially since that was at the heart of the talk given by our minister just two hours earlier. With a smile, later in the day I wished the tattooed 20-something male sacker at the super market a happy mother’s day, but I think the whole notion of male/female qualities within each of us was lost on him. He smiled back, nonetheless.

I guess the point of all of this comes down to celebrating who we are. Eventually, we are all orphans. In the three years since our mother died, I have made peace with the truth that I can’t walk up the road to her house and fix her a bowl of Cream of Wheat or pick up the phone and say hello, without giving it a second thought, to anyone from our parents’ generation—not anymore. Only one aunt—our Aunt Edna by marriage—remains from that generation. And at 83, she is living with a terminal diagnosis. Living friendly with the news, it seems, she is taking each day for what it brings. I saw her a few weeks ago. Although I was a little frightened (What do you say to someone who is facing the inevitable news of our finality?), I realized quickly that day—as she sat in the passenger seat of her granddaughter’s pickup truck, ready for the return trip to her home some 200 miles away—that loving feelings trump whatever fears cause us to feel uncertain. We visited for only 15 minutes. I almost made it through without crying. But when I told her that I named her and all of her family in the list of blessings I speak each night, I couldn’t contain the emotion I felt at remembering, remembering. And one important truth sitting arms outstretched on the front of my brain is that we are all in this together.

I chose to live in this place where I have no blood connections—not that any such connections guarantee anything at all. There are no Sunday family dinners here, at least not for me, and not of the kind that I recall from all of the years of living around family. But somehow that seemed all right when I stood where Big Tesuque stream crosses the road that leads to almost 12,000 feet. With the water rushing behind me and in front of me, I fixed my eyes on that tumbling water making it way around a fallen aspen and down, down, how far I don’t really know. I stood there, legs akimbo of sorts, my hands resting on my hiking pole, and I breathed and counted, trying to stay focused on the sounds of the wind and the water and the cool afternoon air, wrapping itself around my legs, in short pants for the first time this season. I made it to 10 times 20, breathing in and exhaling my emptiness, and I found a lovely peace. Alone I was, in one sense, but somehow it didn’t seem so lonely, as I made my way back down, greeting families and even one sole sojourner such as I. I am reminded in all that I choose to read that we are never alone. Sometimes we long for quiet times, sometimes we long for the company of others. Sometimes we long for something we know not. And so it is.

Mother’s Day—Santa Fe, New Mexico (May 10, 2010)
R. Harold Hollis