Who is this woman, my Mum?

This weekend is Mum’s Day and many of us will celebrate those special women in our life who flipped our French toast, zipped up our coats, pressed our best outfit and was the ear to which we poured out our story over and over again.

We know that woman, the Mum woman but what about the woman inside the Mum? Do we know her?

Yes there is someone in there; not someone else but someone more. She is the woman who existed before you did. Who that person is may surprise you.

Check out My Parents Were Awsome. It’s a fun website which will remind you that parents are people too.

Now as I approach my sixtieth birthday I realize that I never really got to know my Mum as a woman and I wonder if I had made that connection would be wiser for it now in my own aging time.
I would love to know her opinions on so many things. What would she have said about her aging? Did she feel her confidence grow as her wisdom deepened or did she miss her youth every day? What were her dreams when she was twenty and where did they settle by the time she was ninety? What about her 70 year marriage to my Dad…what was the taste of love so long matured?

I have opinions about who my Mum was as a person based on what I observed but I wonder what I could have learned from the right conversation. Maybe just a few girlfriend-like conversations would have given me the insights I now crave and maybe my Mum would have cherished those conversations too. Think about it… do we not love to talk about our lives and what we have learned along the way?

Of course your Mum is always going to be your Mum. The roles–motherhood, sisterhood, daughterhood and any other hood you want to add–continue most of our lives but it is a woman’s relationship to the roles that changes. While pre-50 role playing was intentional after 50 it is more spontaneous. The actions begin to flow more naturally and without tension. Women begin to describe themselves as comfortable in their roles in a way they never were before. They are more comfortable with the unknown and unplanned aspects of life and the opportunities they bring. They are more comfortable because they are unburdened by codes of right and wrong or the incessant need to please others that drove them before 50. Maybe in that new spontaneous space there is room for you as a daughter to enter as a confidant and to share the journey of womanhood that this person you trust so much has experienced.

Your Mum might tell you, if you are lucky and if you listen well, what life looks like to her now, seven or eight decades into life. She might talk about the gratitude she has for the experiences of her youth–even the painful ones. She might tell you about the clarity she has about what is important and what is not. We spend so much time with our heads down to the grindstone of living we need such reminders–and what better source than Mummy?

She might tell you also about the fears that still haunt her. Maybe some are for you and the life she so wants you to have. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could put some of those fears to rest for her?

This Mother’s Day I will be with my daughter and son and I will think of my Mum, her mothering and her womanhood and the stories I never thought to ask about.

Happy Mother’s Day to us all. Even if we have no children, we are all daughters so we all deserve to celebrate this day!

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