On Motherhood

I heard a song this morning, an old favorite, “Mary” by Patty Griffin.  I already had Mother’s Day on my mind when it came on, and I had to stop and listen to the lyrics that mean something so different to me now than they did when I first heard the song a decade or so ago.

Back then when I first listened to the song, I thought of the mother of Jesus, that famous virgin mother we love to deify and humanize in turn.  I pictured the statues and paintings of her likeness, a young woman cradling the messiah or with beams of light flowing out of her chest.  To me, Mary had always been just a scared girl, cowering at the feet of angels and laboring on some stable floor, but the Mary of this song has those glory beams on her chest covered up by an old, flour-dusted apron.  This Mary is someone with worn, cracked hands, washing dishes back in a corner of the kitchen where the only light that reaches her is that bit of sun bleeding in around the edges of her son’s enormous shadow.

"Jesus says Mother I couldn't stay another day longer,
Flies right by and leaves a kiss upon her face.
While the angels are singin' his praises in a blaze of glory,
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place.”

The song is not about the virgin Mary, not really, or at least not only about her.  In time, I understood it also to be about the universal struggle of all mothers, those terrified and somehow resigned creatures who stay behind and let their children fly away, who resist the impulse to pin their babies down, to reach out with rough, dishpan hands and hold them tight and safe from the world.

I understood it to be about my own mother, who in so many of my memories is stationed in the kitchen.  I understood it to be about how I could sit on a bar stool across the counter from her, watching her knead dough with hands that I was sure I would never have, chattering excitedly about college and careers and traveling the world without a thought of how traitorous those dreams might sound to her.  And it was about how she was always walking around the house picking up socks and backpacks, putting things right without missing a stride. And about how my mother-in-law is always cleaning up people's drinks before they've finished them.  About how their mothers did the same, how mothers everywhere serve their families quietly, faithfully, doggedly, day in and day out, all the while knowing the ultimate betrayal is coming and when the day comes, they will just step out of the way and let their children fly on by.

This song was an anthem of motherhood to me, a highly evocative and layered thing.  It made me think of sitting in my mother's bathroom, watching her get ready, memorizing the way she put on her mascara.  It reminded me of standing in her closet, where a row of pretty clothes smelled like her and I could hide among her skirts and feel almost like I was brushing up against her leg as I did when we were out somewhere and I was shy and wanted to hide.

No matter how long I live, no matter how far away I move from that time, her skirts will always be the ones I brushed up against in days of childhood insecurity, her face will always be the one I looked up to when I wasn't sure how to answer a question or which direction to go.  Her recipes are always the ones I expect to taste when I reach for a cookie, her voice always the one in my head when I think of a lullaby.  Her memory, her presence is lodged in my life, as if she is still following me around, gathering up dirty socks from the carpet in my wake.

“Mary she moves behind me,
She leaves her fingerprints everywhere.
Every time the snow drifts, every time the sand shifts,
Even when the night lifts, she's always there.”

Today when I heard that song again, this time as a mother myself, I thought of my mother and Jesus' mother, and then I saw myself as I fit into that continuum of motherhood.  I saw Nico talking to me as I do the dishes after dinner, standing by the refrigerator and telling me animated stories about dinosaurs and airplanes and super heroes.  I saw Lincoln tugging on my shirt, chanting ma ma ma, desperate for my attention, banging cabinet doors when I am unwilling to stop dicing onions and hold him.  Here I am, scooping up Legos and action figures as I cross the living room, dropping them in a basket on the way to the kitchen without even realizing what my hands are doing.

It is unthinkable to me that I am leaving my fingerprints all over their lives, that I am lodging myself in their minds in a way that can never be un-lodged, for good or for bad.  The weight of that responsibility is so easily drowned out by the rhythm of silverware clattering away in the dishwasher.  It is so easy to forget that the way I spend my moments now is the way I will always be to them, that every day I am cementing what iconic image of mother they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

 And in the same way, it is easy to forget what an unspeakable honor it is to have the chance to be that person, that iconic figure for someone.  Someday my children will compare their cooking to how I did it, compare how clean their house is to how clean I kept mine, compare the love they get from everyone else to the love they know will always be available from me.  True, someday they may lament that too many of their memories of me are in the kitchen, but at the same time, mine will always be the skirts they hid behind, mine will always be the lullabies they hear in their heads.

And chances are they won't stop any more than I did to think about the years I'm spending staying behind to clean up the place while they are flying by, on the way out the door to bigger and shinier venues than my little spot in the kitchen.  They won't dream (unless they have kids of their own someday) that the exhausting part is not scrubbing casserole dishes and picking up Legos every time I walk through the room; the exhausting part is trying to be the mother they deserve from my post at the kitchen sink, trying to fit it all in and be enough, and doing it all with the knowledge that one day they will plant a kiss on my face and be gone.

As we approach Mother's Day, I think of my beautiful mother and how much she is with me every day even though she lives halfway across the country.  I think of my mother-in-law, how she was all of these things to my husband, and how for many years she did it alone.  And, of course, I think of my little ones, whose lives are rushing by me so fast I can hardly catch my breath, but who have initiated me into a club founded by Eve, made famous by Mary, and populated by every other woman who has known the ecstatic, impossible experience of motherhood.