An Ode to the Moms

The first mom I ever encountered was of course, my mom, Real Mom, the woman who birthed me, the source of my being, the story from which I was written, the greater book to my singular page. She will always be the first and the last, the greatest, closest to an angel in human form and built with resilience so strong to handle the hardest of times, the deepest of troubles. She is the rock, the unchanging stability that lasts forever as seasons change and change back again, she is sturdy and still. As I grow up, she is never replaced, only added to, and the sum of everyone else’s efforts could not add up to hers when it comes to the giant equation of pluses and minuses that is my life.

But the second mom was my sky mommy, the mom of my dreams, literally. She was the mom who fulfilled my most secret wishes while I was asleep. We met every night in the stars, she would sit on the moon and motion for me to join her on her lap, and she would comfort me and rock me to sleep as my worries about what lay in the darkness began to ease. One year she left me, and it was hard. Every night that year I woke up at 3 AM and went to find Real Mom so that I could once again be rocked back to sleep. Since then, I’ve wondered where sky mommy went, but I learned to get by without her. I rock myself to sleep now.

The next woman to shape my being was Georgetta, my partner in crime. I remember her vaguely, although she no doubt is a crucial part of the person I am. I associate her in my mind with long walks, time spent outside, just the two of us. We had a real bond, me and her, and she was the first person I let in aside from the members of my close family. Georgetta was not my blood, but I think she felt like it. I haven’t seen her in a while, she too came and went, but I don’t think that was her fault. I’m sure she would have stayed if I needed her.

Over the years, I found more moms. The babysitters and teenage girls who came to watch me while my parents left to go somewhere at night. I hated them usually because if they were coming it meant the people I loved most were leaving. But they cared about me too, or maybe they just wanted that $12 an hour, or a sense of independence. But one of them even taught me how to use the bathroom by myself, others cleaned up my messes with the help of their mothers driving to my house after a frantic phone call. I was a mess, I didn’t just make them. And these women came to clean me up and then went with the residue from my mayhem left on their hands and in their minds. I wonder if they have children of their own now.

And of course, the moms of my mom and dad, the two extraordinarily strong women who came to get me when I was sick and Real Mom was at work. They nursed me back to health with a bowl of chicken soup and my favorite movies and some candy. They always knew what I needed, they got me. I still can’t imagine them ever being kids themselves, they seem as if they were born into the graceful, wise forces that they are now. Like they’ve known who they needed to be for me and my siblings their whole lives, and everything they did was just to make it here.

The subtle, humble moms of my childhood were the mothers of my closest friends. The ones who housed me, who fed me, who watched me, who protected me. For hours on end they would take on the responsibility of an extra child just to make their own happy. Like the one who made sure I was okay the night I got in a car accident and my parents were out of town. The one who let me sleep at her house for multiple nights in a row. The ones who hosted me every single weekend without hesitation because that was the right thing to do. Where did they learn how to put me first? And why?

I have found moms in my friends. The ones who saved me when I fainted, lifting me off the floor of our apartment in Israel and reassuring me that I was okay, that I shouldn’t be embarrassed, that this happens to everyone sometimes. They made me feel loved just as Real Mom did, and I didn’t know I could find this type of love in people my age. I guess they learned it from theirs just like I learned it from mine. What a blessing it is, to be rubbed off on by the soldiers that are our mothers.

And really, mothers are everywhere, they are women who help you find what you need when you’re lost, they are men who raise their kids alone and have to be two things at once, they are street lamps and stop signs, GPS’s with a pulse. They teach us to be kind, to be brave, to love and deserve love, to give more than we take, to listen more than we speak. They teach us that the best nights are spent with family and loved ones, that light can always be found in the dark, that everything gets better with time because they’re just a phone call away. And really they’re closer, because everywhere we go there’s a mom within yelling distance. Her ears are perked up, waiting for you to call, she is constantly on duty, never resting. Her own children go to sleep, but the children of the world are hers, too. This hurts her sometimes, the weight of responsibility, it wears her down, but she was built for this. She’s there when we need her until we don’t need her anymore, and when we remember her, we wish we hadn’t been so selfish. She is Georgetta, a woman who builds a relationship with a little girl only to not see her again after all of those special years, to this day not seeing the fruit of her labor. I wonder if she misses me. She is the mom of my friends, who watched me grow and bloom only to see me rarely, on holidays and breaks. She is here for us more than we realize, waiting for us to find her and run into her arms and say “Thank you for being there for me” and we somehow forget to be there for her. So we have the responsibility to encourage her to rest sometimes, to take her watchpost and guard it diligently. And slowly, when we take those nights on call as her replacement, we learn how to be like her. We mimic her movement, we study her gaze. We learn when we’re needed, when we’re just wanted, when it’s a cuddle or a lecture, or when we need to let someone else take control. With time, we learn the ins and outs of one of the hardest jobs there is. You do not have to pass a test to get it, you do not have to go to school, you have to care. We are what we are because of the moms who made us. The biological mothers and the mothers by choice, the mothers by chance, the mothers we met for a minute and then forgot.

One day, I pray to be a mom of my own. I am made of moms, I am standing on the hands of the moms who built me, who hammered my nails into the wall and made me stand up straight, who cleaned up my mess but were never able to scrub it off their hands, who tirelessly repeat the same effort to receive no thank you, who show up every day for the people they love. The best part is that they weren’t born that way either, they are made of moms, and their moms are made of moms, and so on and so forth.

I revise my statement, and I write that I don’t just pray to be a mom. I pray to be a mom who makes moms, to form the world of my future with the integrity of my past, using the sturdy foundation that was built for me to build it higher so that the moms I make can climb to the top and see farther. It’s scary to imagine generations sprouting from me, but I picture my grandmothers, simple seeds in the ground, sprouting tiny leaves, and somehow expanding into the giant trees they are today, branching out in all different directions, flowers of every color hanging off of them.

I can be a CEO, I can get a PHD, a BA, a BS, an MD, or create an LLC, but there is something so quiet, so mysterious about the way a woman can go her whole life working and being none of these things, still feel fulfilled, still feel like she made a difference, still feel like she had a purpose, simply because someone called her “Mom.” Her degree is one of practice, her professors were the mothers she knew, her exams were disguised as life, and her course load was never and will never be “manageable.”

So even when we don’t need all of our moms anymore to survive, we keep in mind that one day they will need us. And we put a key under the mat, we remind them that they are welcome, and when they show up and hesitantly ask for our help, we tell them that it’s about damn time they take what they deserve. From all of those years watching and studying, we get them in a way no one else does. We clean up their mess now, we nurse them back to health, we keep going without thank you’s, and we show up for them every single day. It’s the never ending cycle of moms: to need, and then be needed, so that one day they can need again.