My Happy Mother’s Day

This is not my tattoo, Mom.

MOTHER’S DAY, A manufactured holiday that can sometimes be second only to Valentine’s Day in overpromising and underdelivering, is mercifully over, once again. This year, mine was exactly right: We went out for a nice lunch with my mom, and some good friends, and the kids mostly behaved, and my other mom friend and I toasted each other with something called a “health margarita,” so named because (in addition to the requisite tequila) it included grapefruit juice.

I got perfect presents: My son drew flowers and wrote “I love you, Mom” on a canvas grocery bag that is now my prized possession, and my daughter made me a painting, drew me a page full of hearts, and wrapped the latter, almost all by herself, in birthday paper.

I gave my mother a couple of books I hoped she’d like, one on gardening, the other a field guide to birds, both titles specific to the region of the country (mine) she now calls home. She’s lived with us now for about two months, and I think we’re all mostly amazed at how well it’s going. Mom says her goal is to not intrude and to not interrupt our peaceful home, and she’s mostly succeeded. My mother is older than she’d like me to write here, older than you’d guess if you met her, and vainer about her age than I ever expected her to be. She’s active, she still works, she’s beautiful and fit and aware and constantly learning new things. She moved to be with me, to be with our kids (ok, more the kids than me) but most of all, I think, to not live alone anymore after too many years that way.

I like to laugh and tell friends that what’s good enough for Michelle Obama is good enough for me. (It’s not just my multi-generational household: I’m working on my arms, and just like her, I put my vegetable garden on the front lawn.)

But after reading Marion’s memories of her and Margaret’s mother’s last years, I realize how lucky I am. I am one of the lucky members of what my friend Rebecca tells me is called the “sandwich” generation: mid-life adults smack in the middle of young children and aging parents, the meat in the familial sandwich. I am lucky because I’m a care-sharer, not a care-giver: My mom is here not by necessity, but by choice.

It’s true that having my mom here gives me a childcare backstop better than any babysitter. But it’s also a rare kind of comfort to feel as an adult: the idea that just upstairs is the person who loves me No.Matter.What. Yes, we grate on each other. Yes, we ask too much of each other sometimes and thank each other too little. But no matter how much we may annoy each other (and, yes, we do), right here: I have my mama.

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