To all the mothers everywhere, whether your kids have 2 legs or 4:
the light that is in me honors the light that is in each one of you.
Namaste.
Category: mother
Beginning: Honoring My Mom Through The American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life
My donation gave Mom a way to stay connected and support the cause. She is a cancer survivor and a number of our family members and family friends have battled the disease. It’s become so common in our society now that all of us know someone touched by it. Relay for Life gives us a way to collectively fight back – a powerful lesson my mom has taught me repeated throughout my life. There is strength in mothers, strength in being part of a movement.
Yesterday The Nate Berkus Show featured a number of stories about viewer’s moms. While the gifts and surprises that the featured moms received were incredibly generous, the most touching part of the show involved the the children of these moms explaining why their moms were so important to them. It reminded me of how much words can mean when backed by heart and soul.
This Mother’s Day I hope you’ll pick up the phone or take pen to paper and let your Mom know how much her care and support means. Love and gratitude can never be over-communicated.
My Year of Hopefulness – My Mother Makes Room
“The only real elegance is in the mind; if you’ve got that, the rest really comes from it.” ~ Diana Vreeland
Today my mom began the slow and sometimes painful process of emptying. My mom is an extremely skilled collector, meaning that she never, ever gets rid of anything or anyone. She likes to be surrounded, with things, with people. It gives her comfort and she’s always had in mind that eventually someday she’d get to that magazine, or that book, or that craft project or conversation she was meaning to have. And someday she’ll get to some of them, but truthfully, she won’t ever get through all of it. There is 35 years of stuff in her house and today it was time for a good chunk of that stuff to go.
I’ve been thinking about this process of emptying, wiping the slate clean, and beginning again. It’s a task best done often and thoroughly. It’s amazing what piles up in our homes, lives, and minds. Even in our writing. I’ve tried to approach my own process of emptying with an attitude of elegance. Consider modern design, of anything really. Clean lines, simplicity, removing the unnecessary so the necessary can speak. I’m trying not to think of it as throwing out, but making room to breath and to move.
While on the surface all this emptying sounds like it would be a great relief, as if a huge weight has been lifted from us, I must confess that in some ways it is a bitter sweet relief. My mom had to let go of a lot of memories in order to make that room in her home. She had to recognize that certain parts of her life are gone. It’s a brave thing she did – to let go. There are so many people who never do that, who can never face up to the fact that life is moving by at a very quick pace, and that sometimes there are some things that must be let go of. We can’t possibly hang on to it all.
My mom is an elegant woman – she has handled far more than her fair share of obstacles and disappointments. She’s suffered huge losses of many things and people, losing some after many hard fought struggles, and through it all she worked hard to keep a face of elegance and grace. She got through it by putting her mind in order and saying that right now she just needs to get from A to B, and tomorrow she’ll consider getting to C. We were her first priority always, no matter what, so I guess that made some decisions easier to make. She was never going to do anything that wasn’t good for her kids. She is by every definition an elegant mother.
So now as she enters the autumn of her life with a less full home in every sense, she has the room and space to decide how to place what remains. And though now it may look like there are unnatural holes and pockets, my guess is that she will find a way to make it all fit together. By removing what was no longer needed, she uncovered and rediscovered lost treasures and memories and ideas, things that will enrich her life going forward. It will just take some time to get used to.
My Year of Hopefulness – Mother’s Day
I took Mom to brunch and to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens today for Mothers’ Day. It’s easy for her to hop on a train, I pick her up at Grand Central, and away we go. Though I love my family get-togethers it’s also fun to have my mom all to myself once in a while – something we had precious little of when I was younger.
All day I considered how Mom has shaped my life, how much I’ve learned from her, and how much comfort she’s given me over the years. We drive each other crazy from time to time also, though I think that’s more just the nature of mother-daughter relationships. I wouldn’t swap lives with my mom – she had a tough go of it for many, many years. She came of age in a time when women were starting to be treated with equality, though she endured many unfair circumstances that had nothing to do with her ability and everything to do with her gender. I know she lives vicariously through my accomplishments and I try to live up to that honor every day.
After dropping Mom at Grand Central so she could catch her train home, I hopped onto Facebook to see a note from my friend, Heidi, that she was spending the day celebrating the great lady who now watches over her from above. I reflected back on my day with Mom, thinking about how excited she was to smell the full scent of wisteria and see the azaleas in bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I’m so grateful for this time we have together – it’s one of the biggest reasons I came back to NYC. After my Mom’s cancer in 2006, I realized with a sad and painful awareness that she wouldn’t be with me forever, that someday I’d have to celebrate Mother’s Day the same way my friend, Heidi, did today.
For now though, Mom’s alive and kicking (or at least she will be kicking once she gets her new knee on June 1st) and time is of the essence. As we went up the escalator from the subway, my mom gave me a hug and thanked me so much for the day.
“You spent a lot of money, today, Christa.”
“That’s fine, Mom. I’m happy to be able to do it. It’s only money.”
And I meant it – it is only money, and I can always make more of it. I won’t always be able to get more time with Mom so we need to savor it while we can. Happy Mother’s Day to all!
My Year of Hopefulness – A Little Bit of the Divine
This morning I was on the Metro-North train to visit my family for Easter. Two little boys, twins, got on the train with their mom, who looked exhausted and worn out, with a couple of new toys. Another woman walked by – she was one of those classic old New York women who you know from her tone of voice have lived in this big city for the better part of their lives. I am sure she talks to everyone she meets as if she’s known them forever, and given all she’s lived through, she’s entitled to state any and all of her opinions as fact. These women also exactly what to say and when to say – their timing and level of appropriateness is impeccable.
“Where’d you get those toys?” she asked the two children. “Mom or the Easter Bunny?”
“The Easter Bunny.”
“Huh. You know Moms are much better than the Easter Bunny. You can’t trust a rabbit but you can always trust you mother.”
The mother smiled, grateful and confused. The boys looked at her with surprise.
“What if I know the rabbit?” one of the boys asked.
“And if I can’t trust a rabbit, can I trust my cat?” the other boy asked.
“Well cats are tricky, too. Even mine. And I guess you can trust a rabbit if you know him, but my money’s on your mother.”
And with that very simple statement, she was gone. When I overhear conversations like this, I sometimes wonder if I’m witnessing a divine moment. Maybe that woman is some angel who showed up right when this mother needed her most. It’s possible that I watched too many episodes of Touched by an Angel with my own mom when I was little. It’s also possible that I so much want to believe in the divine in some form that I’m willing to tell myself these elaborate stories as if they are proof.
Springtime does this to us. I’m having a hard time remembering the last winter that lasted this long and seemed this cold and unrelenting. And I like cold weather and snow, thick sweaters and boots. But this Easter, I’m really ready to wish it a fond farewell, hoping it doesn’t rear its head until December.
I’m ready to see some new life sprout up from the Earth. I’m ready for New York to transform itself with flowering trees and sidewalk cafes. I’m ready for a little bit of the divine, or even seemingly divine, to touch our lives again and bring us some hope that we are moving forward and evolving, and the most powerful vehicle for that kind of message is in watching nature take on different hues and textures. I’d like to see all this hard work we’ve been doing during this cold winter come to fruition through a rebirth of heart and mind and spirit.
Quick Conversations
Why does a burning platform need to emerge before we adopt change? I wish it didn’t take life altering events to help me get my priorities in order. I wish I could always find what Alec Horniman, one of my professors, calls “a clearly perceived better way.”
I am always amazed how the shortest conversations have the most incredible impacts. I spoke to my mother recently and the conversation went something like this:
“Well, I’m glad everything’s going well.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’m going to run into Mellow Mushroom to play trivia and eat some pizza.”
“Okay. I just wanted to tell you one more thing…..They found some abnormal cells in my mammogram.”
“Are they going to test them to find out what is abnormal about them?”
“They already know what “It” is.”
(Long pause)
“Are you telling me you have breast cancer?”
“That’s what “It” is.”
I capitalize “It” here for a reason – I have a lot of respect for cancer, for its power to change how we look at the world. I can’t think of a six letter word that has ever had a more immediate effect on me. There have only been a handful of situations that have truly altered the way I perceive my future – 3 to be exact. This one tops the list.
I blinked, and my life was different. In that moment, I had no words despite my usual gift of gab. My only thought was, “I want my life to go back to the way it was less than a minute ago.” I know now that it never will.
Yes, I will worry more. Though I idolize mother for her strength and courage, I am forced to recognize that she is not immortal. However, I have found that there are many more good things than bad that come from this situation. I will be more grateful for time with my mother. I will criticize less and praise more. I will forgive and forget in a way that I have never been able to before. I will be even more conscious of how short life is, of how important it is to do what I love everyday – in both my personal and professional life.
I have set a record for the number of times I have apologized to friends and family for not returning their calls or emails more quickly. My excuse is always, “I just don’t have time.” In actuality, I do have time. We all have time; we just make choices about on what and on whom to spend it.
It is as if my life has permanently found a home under a magnifying glass – everything, the good and the bad, are amplified. The highs higher and the lows lower. Maybe this is better than simply existing in a world that is even-keeled. Those highs and lows do make the game more interesting.
My friends have been incredibly supportive, and I am very grateful for them. Their obvious first question is always, “Is your mom going to be okay?” Usually I answer, “I hope so.” The other answer, the one that’s almost always impossible to articulate is, “I don’t know.” Truthfully, we never know. From one moment to the next, life twists and turns in ways we never expect, and often does so at break-neck speed. I blinked, and my life was different. And that’s not always bad. Things that don’t scare you to death will scare you to life.
Christa Avampato 