Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day. Feels like Christmas, or my birthday. One of those family holidays again. Some of my colleagues said to me, 'Mother's Day, surely tough for you'. My first reaction was to think they were making a joke about my ticking biological clock, realizing later that it was no joke, and that they had probably said that thinking of my relationship with my mother, even though they know very little about it.

I haven't seen my mom for years now. Her last e-mail with birthday wishes came one moth too late. That was OK. What was not OK was her statement that she would have aborted me if she had known the way I would turn out to be. Digesting that was not easy; trying to understand it, even harder. For me it's essential to understand things, so I went into therapy, again. I concluded that her anger probably originates from enormous amounts of unresolved pain. After a couple of sessions, I realized that I needed to stop feeling responsible for her pain; to stop feeling responsible for failing as a daughter. I remember one particular session, with my shrink asking me over and over again, like in a political interrogation in a torture chamber, 'But tell me, how can a child fail? How can you fail as a child?'; and me giving up at some stage, answering 'you can't!'. Ever since that time, I have been trying to get that newly learnt truth into my system, from my head into my heart, but the truth is, I don't really know how.

Today is Mother's Day and I'm sitting in the park. It's a very warm and sunny Sunday. I see plenty of people lying around surrounded by people who most probably are not their mothers. I feel like saying out loud, to all of them, 'What's up with you people, are you all orphans? Where's your gratitude towards the woman who gave you life?'. But I don't think they would react to my question, or appreciate it for that matter. And, after all, maybe they are a bunch of orphans. Ungrateful orphans. Orphans of the soul.

There is a reason why I came to the park today. Baby ducks. I saw the first ones yesterday when running in the forest, and this morning I decided to sit at the duck lake and admire mother nature's ability to create furry cuteness. In between floating plastic bags, rotten leaves and coke cans, I can finally spot them. Swimming behind their mother, just like in a perfect picture book, three little baby ducks are starting their journey through life. What a sight. A glimpse of hope. I turn my head to the right and see a pregnant couple sitting in the shade of a tree, both tenderly caressing her belly with admiring anticipation. I look to my left and see a children's playground, with corresponding children, playing, as well as their sleep-deprived and probably overdepted parents with faces denoting a mixture of contentment and worry. As I start to think that spotting yet another cliché is impossible, I turn around and look behind my back, at the little path that circumvents the lake. I see a middle-aged woman (probably someone's daughter) pushing a white-haired woman's wheelchair (probably someone's mother). Hope is all around me on Mother's Day. Everywhere I look. Happy Mother's Day, Mother.