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If I’m looking for a sentimental experience, I don’t generally go to Chuck E. Cheese’s to see their life-size puppets provide musical entertainment. On this particular visit, however, the sixfoot bear with her cheerleader outfit, pom-poms, and ponytails left me discreetly dabbing at my eyes. When this mechanical lead vocalist introduced her next selection as a tribute to all the mothers out there, all the unsung heroes of the world, I smiled and continued eating my pizza. However, when I tuned the bruin back in, she was singing, “You’ll never know that you’re my hero….” As I listened to the song, I realized that no, my mother never will realize that she’s my hero.
A mom can be a hero to a young child, an innocent child who still sees Mommy and Daddy through rose-colored glasses. Mommy can be the hero for fixing up boo-boos and making them all better, for taking the time to read and laugh with her little one, for knowing just how to fix a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or for being warm and cuddly and soft. But as a child reaches adolescence, those glasses often become muddied and “Motherrrr!” is anything but “cool” and “heroic.”
When son or daughter reaches young adulthood, dear old Mom may once again become a pretty neat person; but it’s not until the daughter reaches a major milestone in her own life that Mom’s nobility and heroism can once again reach superhuman proportions.
This major milestone is motherhood, when mother and daughter have something wondrous and challenging in common, when daughter-become-mother now understands those feelings her mother had, now smiles knowingly as she remembers the “curses” her mother often uttered in moments of frustration: “Just wait till you’re a mother!” or, “I hope your children treat you just like that—then you’ll understand!”
Daughter can now appreciate those nights when mother sat up waiting for her to come home and why mother was both tearful and angry when daughter finally arrived. The daughter can now begin to understand the fears her mother had, the worries, the hopes, and the dreams. She can now see that many of her mother’s “faults” were really just maternal attempts to protect her offspring. She can relate to the pain and pride and joy that are part of the motherhood turf.
Never in the course of the shared lifetime is the potential greater for a rich mother-daughter relationship. And that’s where my tears came from, for I never had the chance to share motherhood with my own mother. She died less than a year before my first pregnancy.
I imagined often during those early days of motherhood what it would have been like to have her close by. I longed to share my precious children with her, to show them off, to hear her bragging over their accomplishments and oohing and aahing over everything they did. I wanted to watch her laughing with them and teaching them her wonderful sense of humor. In the challenge of caring for twin infants, I even imagined how my mother would mother me. My children are grown now, and my relationship with them has morphed into something new. The pain of grief has diminished after twenty-five years, yet there’s still much about my mother that I admire and miss. I still regret that she never got to know my children, or they, her.
Mother, I hope you knew you were a hero.
(excerpted and updated from her book, For Any Young Mother Who Lives in a Shoe, published by Judson Press, 1991)
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