May 12, 2018 – Mother’s Day follows very closely on the heels of my own birthday. My mother loved my birthday. Not in the way that she would make some public show out of it; no that was for my brother. My brother was a much better child to his mother than I was. That child is usually the one to get the showy birthday. But then again, my birthday is after tax-day, and my brother’s is before, so Uncle Sam usually got what would have been reserved for any show on my day. What I got though, I much preferred.

Every year, my mother would tell me the story of my birth. And it would be at as close to the exact time I was born as possible, well that is in the years of my life where I lived away, seemingly most of them. At a time between 2 and2:30 in the afternoon (aren’t I fortunate the events weren’t in the middle of the night), she would call me and do the story. I don’t care how many times I had heard it, it was always the highlight of my birthday. Mind you, I’ve told this story before, so forgive the repeat, but I have a different point this time. She would say whatever age I was, let’s use 26, for an example…

“Twenty-six years ago, we were in great peril”, she would say. “They rushed me to the hospital because I was bleeding. They told me they had to take you or I wouldn’t live. They said they would do what they can, but [in 1962 in East Texas], a baby born at seven months probably wouldn’t make it.” You had other plans”, she would tell me, “great big plans.” She would tell me how she would ask every day about me, how every day they would tell her I was alive, that I was doing okay. No life support, just the kind of incubator they raise a baby chicken in. I really do like to sleep warm, perhaps that’s why. She would tell me about the day they came to her and said I think you need to give this baby a name because we think she’s going to make it, how that was the greatest present she ever got. My birth certificate is dated eight days after the date of my birth. Those eight days represent that time frame she described to me every year on my birthday. She named me after a last name that was part of the name of an oil company (Christie, Mitchell and Mitchell, for those who are interested), although I’m convinced she didn’t know how she wanted to spell it because I’ve seen several variations: a Christmas stocking that said Kristi, my birth certificate saying Christy, and then the version she actually taught me, Christie. I have her middle name, the same middle name as her mother. Tradition on the female side.

For many years, I didn’t know any of this significance, and she never really told me, but I get it now. It’s the message I took from all the criticism my mother through her love-child received in the days leading up to what was supposed to be the final illness of my father last year. Tradition on the female side … because she wanted me to be exactly what I am, independent and strong, just in case I ended up having to take care of myself, independent and strong, so the world wouldn’t mock me, think less of me. I never saw what it must have been like for her, despite the fact that my father did marry her. Those times were so unbelievably tough on women who took their own path. I had a truly strong mother, an example most women of my age-range don’t have.

Mother’s Day would follow my birthday two weeks later. Sure I would get my mother a present, a flower, a card, make her a snack, a cake, something, but my mother wasn’t like that. I see these ads depicting women seemingly waiting for their present. Jewelry stores are notorious about this. I can’t imagine this as the message, not personally, and certainly not from my own mother. She thought of the day in reverse — the day to celebrate her children, the day that signifies that she has her precious babies, babies she honestly believed weren’t supposed to exist for her. So that’s my frame of reference – the one day a year where I’m reminded that my own children are not human, as much as I love them. And I suppose that’s the very thing that makes my mother so special as a mother.

Oh, that, and a few thousand little things, like… She would always make me feel like I had friends. Seriously, who tells their mother the things I told mine? She was so caring too. The little things, like getting up in the dark to make me hot chocolate in the morning hours before I had to go to practices. Like sitting with me in those early years to tell me to wash my face so I wouldn’t have pimples in adolescence. Every night. That’s a really good one, mother’s out there. I even had my very own Neutrogena soap for my face too, the best, she said. Like taking me window shopping when it seemed nothing was going right. Like bringing this dark green little hatchback-thing home, some car of her friends, and trying to convince my father that it was okay to give it to me, that she had the $400 for it. I’ll always wish she hadn’t lost that one. Like how she said my name; nobody can duplicate it. Like hearing me whisper “Mama” when I had a 103 fever and was three stories up. Like going to see a Robert Plant concert with me because I had no friends; there’s a theme here. Like encouraging me to . … well do anything I wanted. Like always making me feel like I had a real home, no matter what the cold and scary world does to me while I’m off doing all of those things. Like working so hard to make a child that others might not have wanted feel so very loved. I could use all of those things now, well, except I always will have that last one. That and Neutrogena soap. It really is the best.

Sure, the list is way longer, and if I get into it too much more, I’ll have even more tears than I have right now, so I think I’ll just dedicate a song to her. It’s called The Best Day. It’s a song that I listen to from time to time. It’s like I could have written it; it’s so perfect for my mom. That was every day my mom was in it.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there, real or want-to-be, and I’ll always be a want-to-be no matter how many years I get away from it’s not possible, to all mothers, in flesh form and in angel form too.