On my mother's birthday

Can I still call it her birthday after this many years? Or does "birthday" expire?

Today is my mother's birthday. She would be 97 years old. Hardly anyone lives that long. But so what? It's the anniversary of her birth. I don't have any particular ritual of observing this day. Some years I post it on Facebook because I like for my friends and aquaintances to see a photo of her and maybe say I resemble her in some way. (I look a lot more like my dad!)

Apartment life, ~1968, Betty Crocker Cookbook

When she died (in 1976, when I was eleven), I didn't live in a world that would tell a bereaved person "You can create your own rituals to honor her, and you can stay connected to her internally and even imagine talking to her." My world was 100 percent practical and based in the substantial outer world. That basis won out. I had a rich inner life, but it never included mental conversations with my mom. 

In the process of writing my memoir of growing up without her, I've examined sparse memories again and again. I've searched them for the feelings of the time, in hopes of enriching my writing. For example, when I was about eight, she explained her religious (Church of Christ) belief that only adults should be baptized. She said you have to understand the meaning of baptism, and a child can't understand the commitment they are making, and anyway, she said, a child can't sin; a child's wrongs are the responsibility of the parents. 

I never forgot the conversation. But when I wanted to write about it, I slowed down and put myself back into the car where we were at the time, driving home from church, and I sort of meditated on the memory until I could re-feel what I felt at the time: wonder, because I saw that my mom's wisdom was big and would hold me up through events of growing up, of which I had no notion at eight; and a sense of lightness and freedom. 

I turned out to be an atheist by age seventeen or so, but it's a beautiful memory. It gives me a glimpse into my mom's own inner life. It's also a vivid example of how she loved talking with me.

Recently I've tried on purpose to develop a parallel world, in my imagination, in which my mom lived (like my dad) into her 80s. It's nice to imagine the life they would have had together. The whole time I was growing up, and all the way until very recently, it never even occurred to me to spin out that fantasy. I think there was always too much to deal with in the real world. When I was younger everything was overwhelming, more than I even realized, and I think that lasted until around age 45. I was no longer just keeping my head above water then, and that was when I decided I had the energy to open a business, which I did. That year is now a landmark in my lifetime of "catching up."