Mother’s Day is one of those holidays that lands differently depending on what you’re carrying.
For some people it’s straightforward. Flowers and brunch and a phone call that leaves everyone feeling warm.
For a lot of the people I know and I suspect for a lot of you reading this it’s more complicated than that.
My mother is complicated.
Not complicated like difficult. Complicated like a person who contains things that don’t always fit neatly together. Strong and vulnerable at the same time. Funny and fierce and capable of filling a room with laughter. Also someone who suffered from anxiety for years in a way that most people around her probably never recognised because she didn’t look like what people expect anxious people to look like.
She came to Canada from the Azores without speaking a single word of English. Built a life here from nothing. Worked in a factory. Raised her children with a fierceness that came partly from love and partly from fear and partly from things that she went through and never fully had the language to talk about.
And she passed some of that on to us.
What I remember most from childhood isn’t the hard parts though.
It’s the kitchen.
My mother still in her factory clothes, dinner already on the stove, asking me to quiz her on Canadian provinces and their capitals. She was studying for her citizenship test. Couldn’t read or write English. Memorized every question and answer by listening and repeating until it lived in her body the same way everything important does.
I’d name the province. She’d give me the capital.
She passed and became a Canadian Citizen she was so proud of herself.
That’s who she is. That’s the full picture.
I grew up fast because I had to.
When you’re the child of immigrant parents who don’t speak the language, you become the bridge between them and the world earlier than any child should have to. Doctors’ appointments. Government forms. Anything that required English that was me. Standing in rooms I was too young to be in, translating conversations I was too young to be having.
It made me responsible in ways I’m still untangling.
It also made me a caregiver before I knew that’s what I was.
And now I’m in my fifties. And my mother is older. And somewhere along the way the relationship shifted she’s not just my mother, she’s my friend. Someone who respects my opinion and asks for it. Someone I can sit with and talk to honestly.
I don’t know what Mother’s Day looks like in your house.
Maybe it’s simple. Maybe it’s loaded. Maybe you’re spending it missing someone or dreading the phone call or feeling guilty for feeling whatever you feel.
All of it is allowed.
The complicated ones loved us the best they knew how.
That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
Both things can be true at the same time.