It's tough being the mom

So today is Mother's Day, the first one I have ever spent away from my son.

He forgot.

Sure he sent a gift, which has not yet arrived and was purchased by his father. I am sure he was involved in some way, but I know it wasn't really from him. Or if it is, that it's an obligation present, something he put no thought into whatsoever.

You might be thinking I'm being awfully hard on him. He is, after all, a teenager and preoccupied with all things which occupy a young man's mind like girls, video games and You-Tube. Besides I am several states away and out of sight is out of mind after all.

See, the thing is, he forgot last year too, when I was there right in front of him. It's not like Hallmark and Kay Jewelers stopped advertising. When I called him on it, he went and found a card he had made in kindergarten or thereabouts and regifted it - the ultimate regift: to someone to whom you gave it once before - saying it's what he meant to give me all along because he really didn't understand the meaning of the card when he made it. It made us both feel worse because that was a lie and I knew it and told him as much.

Really all I wanted was a call, just a call and an I love you. I don't know whether to be angry or hurt and frankly, I'm both. This is what I signed up for I guess, the bad and the good. Still...

I sent a gift to my mother months ago. Dad stuck it in a drawer somewhere until today. It was a nice gift, something she wanted but would never have bought for herself. But I think if you asked her the really gift would have been the phone call.

You see, I thanked her. I thanked her for choosing me, for taking me home with her and giving me a good life. I've said many things in the past, many mean things, about being adopted including, I am ashamed to say, you're not my mother. But I never said thank you. Not until today.

And to my other mother, the one I can't remember and don't know if I ever met, the one who let me go, who hoped I would find a better life than the one I might have had with her, thank you, too. And Happy Mother's Day. And, I miss you wherever you are.

I am sad this mother's day, for things I've lost and things I never had, missing my child when he's not missing me, for never saying thank you before now, for missing my mom and my mother.

And especially because I know those whose moms are gone for good. I know one day I will share in that particular sadness. One day, hopefully years from now, there will be a mother's day where I am motherless. That mother's day will be so much harder than this one.