Hello dear readers!
I hope you had a nice Mother’s Day. This is a day that can be celebratory for some, and painful for others. I hope it was a day that you spent with people you love.
When you’re growing up, you see your mom as someone who knows everything. Honestly, I still kinda feel that way. When my mom first became a mom (to me!!!!), she went to the library and checked out every book she could find about motherhood and parenting. She even interviewed mothers she knew to find out the day-to-day secrets. This is a perfect example of the kind of mom my mom is. She is always researching, always learning, and always growing. She has consistently taught classes, managed businesses, and is always seeking wisdom.
Some of my favorite childhood memories are summer afternoons towing our red wagon down the road to the library. We would pile it high with books, and then spend long afternoons in comfortable silence as we sat around together and read.
The best thing my mom ever taught me was to invest in yourself. She has shown me to have your own passions, to be curious about the world around you, and to never stop learning.
I’ve been moved recently thinking about my matriarchal lineage. What is it that my great, great-great, great-great-great, great-great-great-great grandmothers and beyond have passed down to me? What parts of me, that I think are sooo special and sooo unique, are, actually just a realization of a suppressed dream of the past?
One of my friends told me that she saw this concept in her own matriarchal line. She herself loves to write poetry. And then, after her grandmother died, my friend found her grandmother’s notebooks to be full of poetry that she kept to herself. She had no idea that her grandmother loved to write, too. It turns out that each generation had the gift, and that gift was passed down, again and again, until the circumstances were right and the words were able to reveal themselves. Each woman’s gift became more and more alive in the subsequent daughter’s words.
I love the idea that one generation plants seeds that another generation sows and then another generation harvests. Perhaps the passions, the insights, the joys, the piques of interests that I experience in this life are simply living out what another generation began long long long ago.
There was one morning, early early, where I was awake in our quiet apartment. I put on my headphones and music and danced by myself (I’m a morning person, Jonny’s not :)). It was still dark outside, and when I looked at the big window in our living room, I saw the outline of my reflection illuminated by the lamp's warm glow. Startled, for a second it looked like I was dancing around a fire. And suddenly I was wondering about my ancestors. Not just the frontier women I often think of, but before them, back and back and back. Did they ever dance around a fire? What were their lives like?
And here I was, in my cushy one-bedroom apartment, in a totally different life and time and world, and yet.
And yet we are connected, somehow. Perhaps I am living out the dreams that they didn’t have an opportunity to explore. Maybe they are with me somehow.
This month, I have six friends having baby showers. SIX! So, I have found myself at Target recently dilly-dallying in the baby section. The little pajamas, the rubber toothbrushes, the bottles, the snuggly blankets with prints of rabbits and zebras and flowers. I find it simultaneously funny and endearing how many inventions we have to take care of these little humans entering our world.
It’s been beautiful to see my friends become mothers, and, as one of my friends explained, it feels like suddenly their hearts are walking outside their bodies. There they are, their hearts, romping around, discovering cars and sparkly dresses, learning to share toys when they don’t want to, and being saved when they try to walk into oncoming traffic. With kids, the world slows down a bit. Seeing my friends – so young, so lovely, so smart, accomplished, and brave – be mothers helps me see my own mother in a new light and gives me hope that I can keep my loveliness, my brightness, my light when I someday have kids of my own.
Here's to the mothers who came before, the mothers who are, and the mothers yet to be.
Thanks for reading!
Lovely, Kimber. This feels true to me: "And yet we are connected, somehow. Perhaps I am living out the dreams that they didn’t have an opportunity to explore. Maybe they are with me somehow." ✨
Oh my - your essay today really touched my heart. Cuz your mom is/was my first child - she made me a mother! So, so proud of her, and I loved the memories you shared of her. Your folks came to visit yesterday, and it was such a treat! I think the world of them both. And I am so proud of you, as well. And very happy that you and Jonny found each other! 💜🙏❤️