Mother's Day Pinball

Mother's Day is always so obnoxiously close to May 19, otherwise known as "Mom's Last Day". Five years next week.

This year the nameless absence - the sharp suckiness of being neither a daughter nor a mother - sucks a little bit more knowing that I would have been announcing our impending twins right around this time. I have wallowed some this week. I haven't exactly been filled with the Peace of the Lord every day while making Mother's Day bouquets all day at work. Sometimes I have felt the sadness start to crush my trachea.

Yesterday a little curly haired cherub came into the florist with her dad to pick out flowers for her mom. She was maybe 4 years old. She told me about her mom and her favorite color and her favorite flower, but that "Maybe we should get a rose, because my name is Rose, and she's my mom!". It was a sucker punch to the uterus. I imagined what it would be like in 16 years or so for my son to wander sheepishly into a florist shop the day before Mother's Day. The kid even came with one of his mom's own favorite vases to ask if someone could help him design something for his her. He chose the flowers and we made the arrangement together. I wanted to meet this woman and give her a high-5. She must have done something right.

Just being around flowers makes me think of mom. The scent of lilacs drags me back to her bushes and the summer Angus decided to gnaw the new stalks to the ground and they still managed to bloom. The violets we picked for her in bunches of purple, white, and yellow handfulls. Peony, Bridal Wreath, Roses, Irises. Mom-ness everywhere, every day. Most days this is actually comforting and warm. This week has been hard. I'm grinding my teeth at night. I'm made woozy by the heady aromas of my work. I feign allergies to make excuses for my wet eyes.

And then there's my uterus. That hollow gape of a thing. I never E V E R thought I would be in this baby-crazy place. Never imagined I would be... here. Infertile, I guess. Or even anxious for children. Or at the "Choose an agency and start the paperwork" stage for adoption.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that Les and Auggie and I are driving downtown tomorrow to meet up with a couple who has been fostering a little dog that I think we need to add to our family. Auggie is so incredibly particular about his dog friends, we are not holding out a ton of hope but we decided it is worth a shot. I think Les is game to help me find an outlet for my Lots of Mother-Related Angst. He deserves a medal. He has been great. Sensitive and supportive and just the right level of realistic. Maybe this little mop of a dog will come home with us tomorrow. The more likely scenario is that Auggie will hate his guts and try to bite him, and that I'll go back to looking at pet adoption photo listings and imagine that I have signed Auggie up for internet dating.

I loved my mom, and I'm thankful for every single year I got to see her or call her on Mother's Day and tell her how much I loved her and how thankful I was that she was my mom. Maybe someday I'll get a call like that. Or maybe the furry head on my leg will be as close as I get. I'll take that, too.