Here’s my belated Mother’s Day post.
Fifteen years ago a reporter from the weekly paper called to ask if I’d grant him an interview. I stammered “Why?”
Well, we heard you’ve got a home-based business and we’re interested in supporting that kind of initiative.
Flattered, I consented. When the reporter arrived I offered him tea.
Sure, thanks. Have you got honey?
He asked questions while sneaking looks around my kitchen. I showed him my products, explained the process of crafting fragrant soaps from researched recipes, deadly lye and tubs of coconut oil.
Does every batch come out perfect?
No. Sometimes they do not.
He asked about the kids.
About where we came from.
About Tom.
I squirmed. Was my desperation obvious? Why were we here, miles from our roots?
A few weeks later, the article came out. Right before Mother’s Day. At the grocery store, fifteen miles from the house, I lifted a copy from the neat stack and placed it on the conveyor belt.
The clerk smiled. “Oh. It’s you!”
Glancing down, there on the front page, a woman who looked a lot like me smiled beneath the headline “Mother of the Year: Deb Reilly.”
Oh, God. No.
I was just a woman trying to be more than an extension of her family. I was no pious mother-of-the-year.
A decade later this ex-“Mother of the Year” let go of one of her children.
On purpose.
Released herself.
Turned the phone to silent—paying penance, gritting teeth through holiday voicemails. Churning empty.
No. No mother-of-the-Year could have let this happen.
No MotheroftheYear could have been so fucking blind.
