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| Parenting 101 |
Mother's Day 2012 is my twenty-third Mother's Day. And I am grateful today for so many things: namely, having my mother still with me and three uniquely gifted young adults, my children, who are each following the paths of their lives.
At church, the pastor called all the moms to the altar for prayer. He asked that we all hold hands. In doing so, emotion washed over me as I linked hand-to-hand and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with at least a thousand other moms throughout the sanctuary.
While it's common to feel alone in one's unique concerns about and for our individual childrens' well being throughout their lives, in that moment, I felt the solidarity that informs the sorority of motherhood.
It is riddled with pride and dissapointment; elation and sadness; hope and despair, assuredness and desperation-- a rollercoaster of yin and yang that is tempered by an abiding faith that all indeed will be well.
The pastor encouraged all moms not to live with regrets, to release ourselves from them and to also let go of childhood hurts that can be paralyzing. He also spoke to moms who have the uneasy burden of having children who have died.
I thought of my own parenting regrets and for that moment followed the pastor's instructions and "let them go". (Parenting is not a regret-free zone.)
I soon found myself praying for a childhood friend whose son's life was ended in a car accident and for another mother whose child was sentenced to prison.
We simply never know where life will take us.
I was reminded that on the way to church, my aunt, who was driving, slammed on brakes to allow a family of ducks to cross the road. It made me smile inside, much like the line in Alice Walker's title line in The Color Purple:
"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."
-Alice Walker, 1982
I'm convinced that nature has many lessons to teach us if we will only pay attention. If you notice ducks, the mom always walks ahead and expects her ducklings to follow. She doesn't keep prodding and reminding or looking back. She's confident that her children are okay.
And this Mother's Day, I'm going to take nature's cue and be confident that mine are and will be, too.
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