I think the hardest thing in the world is to be a mother, and perhaps the second hardest is to fathom how none of this would exist without them. It's impossible to imagine.
I write this on my mother's birthday. I find myself uncharacteristically blocked, desperately trying to articulate how lucky I am to have her, building off of last year.
It's beyond the obvious; biologically speaking, without her, there would be no me. Over the last year, she went a step further, repeatedly saving my life in moments when I was unable to advocate for myself, let alone feed myself.
People would stare as she pushed my wheelchair through the streets or helped support me with my walking poles, a reversal of the natural order. She took the sympathetic looks in stride as she bought adult diapers to bring back to me, racing from pharmacy to pharmacy to find my obscure prescriptions, across every possible grocery store to adjust to my ever-shifting diet. She spent, dare I say spends, every moment looking for possible cures for me, thinking about my magnesium levels, badgering me to stop being stressed. She has manufactured every possible way for me to live my happiest life, regardless of my physical circumstance, surrounding me with beauty and joy, frequent trips to nature, opportunities to swim once I was physically able, and constant visits from my closest friends.
I'm in tears. What more could I ever need than to be loved by someone who will do anything imaginable to keep my body on earth and my spirit alive?
Since my diagnosis, she has barely left my side. We moved to a new city and traveled monthly in search of potential cures. It felt shameful at first, to be thirty-four, thirty-five, and back to living with my mother, but now, as I'm on my own, I find myself missing our daily adventures. I miss our silliness. I miss our reindeer games.
As I write this, I realize that I don't actually have a definition of what a reindeer game is. To us, they are things that are done for no purpose but joy. On a good day, it's a walk down to the beach to look for sea glass and rocks that we would then meticulously rank and sort by color. On a bad day, it's sitting on the couch just naming the birds that fly by. We turned my monthly trips to Germany for a vaccine into reindeer games, each shot a lightly disguised excuse for us to explore a new corner of the world, both of us checking off our bucket lists. We just came back from Sicily, where we disappeared into a deep exploration of olive oils.
This mindset, this approach to life, comes from her stoic beliefs. I've pilfered her mantra that you can't control the circumstances, but you can control the meaning, as easily as I've raided her closet. She is rigorous about what matters, and playful with the rest. She is ruthlessly intelligent and raised us with a fierce sense of integrity. I deeply admire her.
There is an adage that we all, eventually, become our mothers. And as I walk down to the beach every morning to pace along the water, I realize it's already true. I aspire to lead my life dancing in and around her footsteps in the sand, leading with curiosity and perpetual intellectual intrigue, showing up in every moment with wonder and joy.
Despite cancer, this year was easily my best for all of these reasons. And I look forward to every year to come for the same. As my metrics for success have shifted from taking over the world to simply staying alive, I've realized there is little more beautiful in life than finding space to play.
I pray every day that we both live long lives, active lives, lives full of reindeer games. That she may never know a world where I'm not in it.
And that some day, but no day soon, I may have the great fortune of pushing her wheelchair and buying her diapers.
Mom, happy birthday to you! Thank you for showing me what it means to be a mother.
All of my love and more,
Lou
