More on Mothers

I wonder if grown-ups who still have their mothers around understand how lucky we are to have had a mother raise us and still be with us.

I recently attended the Heart Gallery of Central Texas Gala sponsored by the Adoption Coalition of Central Texas. The Heart Gallery is a display of portraits of older children in foster care who want to be adopted into a family.

At this gala, I met a very nice young woman who at 36 was finally adopted. One would think that at 36 she would have already gotten used to flying solo in the world, but to her the adoption was the start of her healing. She had been searching for a family her entire life. She talked so proudly about her new Mom and her brothers.

But every where I look, I seem to find stories of people who long for a mother. I also recently met and befriended another very nice young woman who grew up in a house with a mother who had a mental illness. My friend basically raised herself and then got placed in foster care when she was in her teens. She is now married with children so she has created her own family, but not having a mother has really been hard for her.

The mother of one of my roommates passed away when my roommate was six. She left behind two little girls under the age of 7. My friend talked about missing her mother terribly. The only physical evidence that her mother had existed was a purse my friend had in her closet and a picture of her mom, her dad, my friend and her sister that she had on her dresser.

I attended a reading by Sandra Cisneros a few months ago and she mentioned that when her mother died, she cried because she felt like an orphan and she was 54.

And then there are the lucky people, like me, who not only have a mother, but also had a grandmother to care of me. My grandmother lived at home with us and made every one of my meals for my first 18 years of my life. She baked cookies for me. She sang me lullabies so I could sleep. She held me in her arms when I was sick or sad. She hugged and kissed me every day of our life together. My mother worked outside the home, but she was there for me always. My mother still calls me once a week, and she worries about me when I am sick or she hasn't heard from me in a few days.

I just cannot imagine the void that one must feel when that person who adores you more than possibly anyone else in the world, is gone.

I feel for those children in foster care and I wish I were in a position to adopt a few of them. I feel for my friends who carry this sadness inside their hearts every day. And I feel so fortunate to have been born into a family with caring parents and caring grandparents.

But I can't help but wonder, why me? And why were those children at the Heart Gallery born into families who couldn't take care of them? Why am I the lucky one and not them?

I wonder.

TTYL.