Other Mothers

Other Mothers
 
   This past week was my mom’s birthday. She would have been 95 years old. That would have called for quite a celebration. She died nearly 40 years ago. I often mark her birthday by baking a cherry pie, her favorite. I think of my mom often, but her birthday is always a special day of remembering, as is Mother’s Day which comes soon after her birthday. Mother’s Day is different for motherless daughters, no matter if they’ve been without their moms decades or days.
   After 39 Mother’s Days without my mom, I’ve gotten a bit used to it. Time lessens a sting, but what I am truly grateful for are the women who appeared in my life who, although they did not replace my mom, certainly added to my life in a loving, motherly way. I hope anyone who has lost their mom has found one of these “other mothers” as I did.
   Mary was in my life before I even realized it. As an 18-year-old baby sitter and family friend, she was at our house when my twin sister and I came home from the hospital. She spent summer days babysitting for the four of us kids, and became not a family friend, but family. The day after my mom died, she gave each of the four of us, all in our early 20s, a key to her house. Her house became home base for us. She helped us plan our weddings, hosted family reunions that involved no blood relatives of hers, and became a grandmother to our kids.
   My senior year in high school I ended up living with Russ and Lenore. Russ was the Congregational minister in town. He and Lenore ran our high school youth group. They had an extra bedroom in the back of the parsonage that became my room and I joined Russ and Lenore and their three small children around their kitchen table. Lenore is only 10 years older than me. She was a young mom, caring for three little ones and an entire congregation, and then invited a 17-year-old into the mix. My move into “the manse” had the most lasting effect of anything that happened my senior year, as Lenore and I remain close friends with a connection that doesn’t fit most descriptions. Although I started out as a kid in her house, our relationship is not so maternal any more. It is solid friendship at its core, but continues to grow and deepen. We don’t get to see each other often as Lenore lives in Pennsylvania, but when we are together, after just a few minutes, with cups of hot tea in front of us, we are deep in conversation about what is meaningful in our lives, and it soothes my soul, always.
   At my first real newspaper job, when I was 23, I met Eleanor. She was the office manager. She had two sons around my age. She took me under her wing, and held me tightly there. We started a conversation on my first day at the newspaper, and it lasted more than 30 years. Eleanor was as fierce as she was kind. To me she was part mother, part friend, part guardian angel. I loved the weekends I would get away to visit her in Connecticut and we would pick up our conversation where we left off. She had my favorite kind of tea waiting for me, and then we would take long drives around her beautiful corner of Connecticut, or sit on her screened-in porch. It didn’t really matter what we were doing; we were just happy to be in each other’s company. We would talk on the phone in between visits, and she’d say, “just one more thing,” and we talked on for another ten or twenty minutes.
   Mary and Eleanor have since died, but for many years I sent out three Mother’s Day cards, to Mary, Lenore and Eleanor. It could be difficult to find cards that didn’t have MOM or MOTHER written is sparkly letters across the top. Hallmark didn’t understand that Mary wasn’t my mom, but I was one of her kids. And that Lenore had taken me in as a kid, and became a true friend, and that Eleanor hadn’t raised me, but she loved me as if she had. I was lucky to have to struggle to find three cards that didn’t fit the usual Mother’s Day mold. I hope others of you have to struggle as well to find the right card for these women that arrive in our lives through different circumstances and become guiding lights that show us the way home.