For all the Mums out there on this special day.

            This Sunday is Mother’s Day and I was wondering why this isn’t the biggest holiday of the year. Aren’t mothers more important than dead Presidents or fallen warriors? Why do religious holidays take precedence over the ones who give us life? Shouldn’t the fireworks celebrations be for the woman who birthed us instead of the birth of our nation? Even a silly moment where we transition from one year to the next is taken more seriously than Mother’s Day.  What I’m saying is that Mothers should be the most important thing in the whole world, isn’t that why it’s called Mother Earth?

            I think the reason Mother’s Day isn’t a high priority is because just like many of our own mothers we take it for granted. That’s right, I said it, I take my mother for granted. But then again why wouldn’t I? For as far back as I can remember she’s always been there for me.

            In my columns, I’ve never really written about my mother, tending to focus on my father instead. I always thought that I took after him more than her, physically or genetically that may be true but I realize now that I’ve got a lot of my mother in me and it’s mainly in my head. Not like crazy in the head but more like in the calm steadiness of mind and a realistic view of life.

My mother is a straight shooter, not afraid to ask tough questions or voice her opinions. At 87 years old she’s politically, socially, & environmentally active. On any given day you’ll find her driving her Prius to the gym or a meeting of the local Democratic club or helping other seniors with social services needs. In her spare time when she’s not painting water colors she’s ushering at the theater or leading hikes for the Sierra Club or just spending time with her much younger boy friend.

I guess all that activity is part of the reason I take her for granted, meaning that I don’t really worry about her. If anything, she still worries about me. I just finished reading an article she sent me in the mail about adolescent Marijuana use and its effect on brain development, so yes mother I know, I shouldn’t have smoked so much pot in high school.

I was listening to NPR a few days ago and the commentator was saying about her own mother that as far as she was concerned her mother’s life didn’t exist before she was born. Of course my mother had a life before motherhood; I just don’t know that much about it. What I know is that she was born in the north of Argentina, across the river from Paraguay where her grandfather owned a Mate’ plantation. She grew up and went to school in Buenos Aires, after graduation she traveled to Europe with her mother, meets a guy and almost got married. Back in Argentina she met my father who was a friend of her brother’s and after a short courtship marries him. She got pregnant and had my older brother a couple of months after turning 25. My parents then immigrate to the U.S.A. and after a year or so I became the first American born Lis, THE END.

Like I said, as far as I’m concerned her non-mom life ended when mine began. It’s been all about me (and my siblings) for the last 60 years and I didn’t make it easy for her. It’s not that I was a troublesome child; it’s more about becoming emotionally distant as I got older. I remember as a kid something that in Spanish we called “mimos” where I would lay with my head in my mother’s lap and she would stroke my forehead, nothing since has ever felt so soothing. Unfortunately I became a teenager and started to rebel, then my parents divorced and my mother moved to California while I stayed in Michigan with my father.

For the next 20 years I just had a long distance relationship with my “Mums”. We would call each other on birthdays and holidays, I would fly out to visit every few years and that was it. That’s why I say that I get some of my emotional traits from her in that neither one of us felt the need for more contact than what we had. Even now that I live much closer we still don’t see each other all that much but that’s what’s great about our relationship in that we’re OK with it because we have unconditional love and that’s all that anybody needs.

           So on this most special of holidays, whether you’re with your mother or she’s with you at a distance or in memory, say thanks because none of us would be anything without our Mums.

To view the column in it's original form go to page 18 of the following link. Winters Express 5/11/17