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Motherhood Moments: Now, You Don’t, a Mother’s Day Tribute

My daughter sometimes worries about the relationship she will have with her daughter. She doesn’t have a daughter, mind you. She’s not even pregnant. Or married. But she nevertheless worries because, as she put it recently, “The standard is so high.”

She and I have a pretty good — no, Nancy Friday be damned — we have a spectacular mother-daughter relationship. It is filled with love and longing. And phone conversations lasting late into the night. We’ve dreamed the same dreams, right down to identical thoughts within said dreams. Yet, still she worries that her one-day, well-into-the-future mother-daughter relationship might turn out to be a not-so-good relationship.

Is it coincidence that these worries have surfaced at a time when my relationship with my own mother is at an all-time low? After receiving a cancer diagnosis last summer and enduring some pretty major surgery, Mom has refused radiation and chemo. She also refuses to have anything to do with me. Or, as she put it when we were down for a pre-Thanksgiving visit, “I refuse to break bread with you.” She received my husband and the kids; I stayed behind.

She blames me for “putting her” in an independent-living apartment. Would it matter if I told you the apartment is beautiful? And affordable? Or that she signed the papers with full cognizance and that my sisters and I made the best of a terrible situation?

Estranged from a mother who forever pulsed between butterfly and raptor, I sometimes forget that just nine months ago she gave me what I now realize was her final gift of mothering. Tucked away at a three-week writing residency, I was in my own world. Every few days, I’d walk down the lane to the main house and there would be a letter waiting for me.

Wherever I wandered, her handwriting’s loops, risers and descenders have long woven a safety net against loneliness, editorial rejection and personal uncertainty. A lifetime of those words scrawled in blue ink might as well have been veins connecting us across the miles and years. Preoccupied with the glory of three weeks of solitary writing, I didn’t even notice the brevity of her notes, nearly as short as text messages. I tucked them away to save, oblivious that I was seeing my name written in her familiar hand for the last time.

She called the morning after my return, reaching me before I could call and wish her a happy 74th birthday. “It’s cancer, Debra,” she said. “At least I won’t die young.”

Gallows humor notwithstanding, I wasn’t surprised at the news. She had been long complaining of abdominal discomfort. I had urged her to see a doctor, but didn’t press it, having learned long ago not to do or say anything that could be taken as an attempt to run her life.

I called my sisters after. “Finally,” said one. “I couldn’t call you the whole time you were gone. Mom wouldn’t let us breathe a word. ‘Leave. Debra. Alone. I absolutely forbid you from disturbing her.’ We’ve been holding on to this for two weeks, already,” she continued. “It’s time you knew, too.”

That’s when it hit me. My mother’s life had been turned into a Mobius strip of CAT scans and doctors’ visits, yet she wouldn’t let anything upend my writing time. I wept in gratitude and momentarily, shame.

But that was then and this is now. The butterfly is once again a raptor. The last time she spoke to me her voice was like an eraser, deleting me from the feet up. Our relationship has died so many times, it calls to mind the tubercular heroine of a campy operetta. I have hung on for the butterfly times, hanging on because what I treasure most about myself, she planted and nurtured. Bottom line, I hung on because she is my mother.

I’ve reached acceptance, the final stage of Kubler-Ross mourning, without garment-rending or shiva-sitting. A single thread connects me to my mother now: A prayer for healing of body and spirit. Each week in synagogue I recite it with fading sorrow and leave the heavy lifting to God. She is never far from my thoughts.

During a January blizzard that blanketed Manhattan, my daughter went to the roof of her building to dance in the snow. “It was so magical, Mom,” she said. “I twirled and twirled and caught snowflakes on my tongue. I felt like you.” Then she paused. “No, I felt like us.”

What makes for a mother-daughter relationship such as ours? Luck? That I worked hard to clean up a stableful of baggage, loathe for it to sully what I so dearly wanted to have with her?

There was a third joyous woman up on the roof with my daughter that morning, there and barely there, like a strand of silk unraveled from a long-spent cocoon.

My daughter recognized her, too. While she danced in the morning’s sun-flecked snowfall, this gossamer thread played a game of, “Now you see me, now you don’t. Now you see me, now you don’t. You don’t. You don’t. You don’t.”

Small and medium businesses in Clark Philippines have a lot of interesting and unique products and services to offer but very few outside of Clark Freeport including potential customers in nearby Pampanga Angeles City, Subic, San Fernando and Manila ever hear about them. Market obscurity has led to slow growth in businesses inside Clark Freeport Zone and this is not being rectified as a new public service web site has been created to allow Clark locators to promote their services and products without any charge. Clark Pampanga is a fast growing city and businesses in Manila are making their move to either expand into or relocate to Clark Philippines.

The ClarkPhilippines.com web site is a community service web site dedicated to helping small businesses operating in Clark Freeport, Angeles City and vicinities like Subic and other cities in Pampanga or Tarlac even, to promote their products and services through internet visibility. There is no charge to these services.

Aside from products and services, news releases and product announcements can also be posted free of charge on ClarkPhilippines.com web site.

Where to go in Clark? Hotel Clark Philippines is a De Luxe Hotel in Clark and Subic, a risk free place to stay, cozy and nice ambience, a nice function place for special occasion

You might want to check also the Yats Restaurant is the best restaurant for special dinner, best restaurant for dinner with friends near Manila, also the best place to celebrate special events.

Famous Restaurant in Pampanga, a place to dine with friends in Clark, cozy restaurant with a nice ambience, a nice function place for special occasions. Looking for a restaurant in Clark for a Business meeting? Or a place to eat with friends? Yats Restaurant offers exclusive dinner venue for groups, a good place to celebrate special occasions, it can be a party venue in town. Yats Restaurant is a recommended restaurant for private dinner in Philippines, a well-recognized restaurant that serves good food and good wines for dinner.

Are you looking for an attractive restaurant or a nice place to eat with friends in Clark, Angeles City Pampanga? Yats Restaurant and Wine Bar is a restaurant with good food and good wines for dinner located at Clark Angeles City Pampanga. Perfect for exclusive dinner venues for groups, recommended for private dinner in Philippines. A Restaurant in Clark for business dinner meeting. Private dinner place or dinner restaurant in Clark Subic Near Manila Angeles City Pampanga. Yats Restaurant is one of the Good Restaurant in Pampanga Angeles City Clark near Manila.

Looking for interesting hotels near Manila Subic Clark Angeles City Pampanga?
Trouble free hotels and well recognized hotels in Subic Clark Angeles City Pampanga
Clearwater Resort and Country Club offers a good place to stay in Subic Clark Angeles City Pampanga. In offers nice place to have rest in Subic Pampanga outside Manila.
One of the Philippines top hotels in north Luzon.

This web site contains articles and information that will be helpful to visitors, residents and tourists traveling out of town from Manila on a short getaway to Subic, Angeles City, Pampanga and Clark Philippines. There are several web sites that contain information that might also be pertinent to what is happening in North Luzon, Subic, Tarlac, Pampanga, Clark Freeport Philippines.
Looking for a party venue in town?
Clearwater Resort and Country Club is one of the ideal venues for birthday party because it is a risk free venue. Not only Birthday Parties but also a good place to enjoy family reunion. A good place to celebrate special occasions. Clearwater Resort and Country Club is one of the resorts in Subic Clark Angeles City Pampanga or near Manila with activity amenities, place that are nice for celebration.

Wedding couples looking for wedding reception venues and beach wedding venues can log on to this Philippines Wedding Venue web site for free information and assistance:

For assistance with lodgings, accommodations, hotels and resorts near Manila in Subic, Pampanga, Angels City and Clark Philippines log on to http://www.HotelClarkPhilippines.com

While in Clark, one might as well add to the itinerary a visit to the famous Clark Wine Center, the largest wine shop in Philippines which offers over 2000 selections of fine vintage wine from all wine regions, vintages spanning over 50 years covering all price ranges.

http://www.ClarkWineCenter.com

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