My Public Apology to My Mother

To Mother (v) to love and learn in equal measure.

I am an only child.

This is relevant because I really didn’t want to be. In fact, I made it clear with unnecessary repetition to my mother that the lack of a sibling was unacceptable!

My mother, however, was not an only child.  Moreover, at the tender age of 7 she became the matron of the house when she lost her mother. She was the oldest of three and had no choice but to pivot into the role for her younger brothers.

As a child, I was aware of this but I didn’t really understand the implications. It was like a fact from a history book that I knew to be true and rattled off without attaching a bigger meaning to it.

To that end, I’m afraid I was quite insensitive in my diatribes as to why my parents refused to have another child and the very personal disservice they were actively doing to me.

(I’m sorry mom. Please accept my apology on this very public platform.)

I had no way of knowing it then but my status as “only” was the greatest gift they could have ever given me. As a result I:

• *Searched out other children, creating and maintaining relationships with other families.

• *Honed my innate caregiving skills while beginning my early-childhood research at a very young age (12, to be exact) by observing tiny kids' nature and testing my nurture theories.

• *Chose my education path and my motherhood path.

And, as I’m often reminded when I tell this story, I avoided any and all sibling rivalry along the way.

I’m now approaching 45 years of age and acutely aware that my parents’ perspectives matter too. That their stories are ones I want to keep with me forever.

Christmas 2019 I took a gift-giving risk, a subscription to #StoryWorth. Over the course of the next year they wrote their own memoir one week at a time and gave the best re-gift ever for Christmas 2020!

The hardcover book StoryWorth sent us!

It just so happened to be the very best year to give this gift as the world was about to hit pause #COVID style. Their stories are intriguing, entertaining and loving and yet, there was one chapter that brought me to my #MindsetMama knees: The one my mother wrote about me!

She has given me permission to share this very personal message as a way of demonstrating the nature of mothering: the journey, the marathon, made up of days and years, then culminating in shared beauty.

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“Nana’s Memory - 9/8/20

‘What Things are You Proudest of in Your Life?’ is one of the Storyworth questions. When I saw this, the first thing I thought of was not a thing, but instead, a person, my daughter Cara.

From the time she was little, Cara loved babies. She became a sought after babysitter, and then a loving nanny to many children, some of whom were disabled. As an only child, she knew she wanted children of her own. When she suffered the loss of her first baby, Emma Grace, at birth, I wondered if she would ever recover from it. Only Cara can best convey her grief, but as a witness to it, and a participant in it, I know her loss helped her become the person she is today.

A few years later, she gave birth to our beautiful granddaughter, Claire Elizabeth, and two years after that, our beautiful granddaughter, Caroline Rose. While raising her young family she drew on an inner strength and formed a chapter of SHARE which helps parents who also suffered the loss of a child. But, her main focus was loving and nurturing Claire and Caroline. I have witnessed how she listens to them and interacts with them. How she guides them to think carefully, adopt good values, which she demonstrates by her example, and make good choices. How she helps them adapt to develop independence and allows them to learn from their mistakes. How she gives them the time they need to find their paths. Paul and I have often said that she is the best mother we know.

And now, all these life experiences have led her to launch a new business, Perspective Based Parenting (now Core4Parenting), in which she uses her knowledge, experience, and natural talents to guide new parents toward raising loving, caring, independent children of their own. I’m excited to witness her journey in this new phase of her life!

I am writing this story on September 8, 2020, twenty years to the day we fell in love with our first grandbaby, Emma Grace. Emma, you would be so proud of your Mom. She is the person of whom I am most proud, due to your ever present guiding light.”