"Can they do that?' he questioned, and he tried a few aloud to emphasize the absurdity.
Every rational assessment urges assent. A mother is a person; a person is a noun. Still, there is no other way to phrase it: I need mothering ...the giving, receiving and participation in. It is grammatically incorrect, but entirely necessary.
Scrawny, substantial, stiff, conforming -- whatever the style or shape of the gaze and embrace -- it is the stuff of life. New mothers, seasoned mothers, mothers who have never birthed or brought home a child ALL participate in the great work of nestling, nurturing, and nullifying the overwhelming worries of the world.
I have been mothered by women in their nineties and women in their twenties, by random strangers and dear friends. It has taken the shape of a smile empathizing with my current calamity, and a knock-down, drag-out hug that squeezes all the sobs from me. As if a silent alarm is sounding, someone steps out of their world and enters into the hurt and pain and need of another, at a moment's notice.
When my very own mother finds a hit, she sticks with it. Thus, I have received a Mary Engelebreit calendar for twenty-four of the last twenty-five Christmases. Thankfully, the illustrator is prolific, and the booth at the mall continues to proffer the annual gift solution.
This month of this year the decorated letters plead, "Be kind. It's hard to be a person."
Just so.
Mothers ease the great load of personhood. They lift the edge of that leaden blanket, and just for a moment, the weight and pressure eases. And in whatever peculiar aspect such lightening is wrought, it is most assuredly "mothering".
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