A Mother’s Day reflection about love, expectations, distance, regret, and the painful realization that motherhood changes as children grow older and build lives of their own.
Mother’s Day always makes me reflective. This morning I woke up thinking about my mother and the complicated relationship we had. I never doubted that she loved me, but her passive-aggressive comments, emotional drama, guilt, and expectations often drove me crazy. For years, I focused mostly on what she did wrong. Now that I am older and have spent decades being a mother myself, I see things differently. I suspect my own sons probably feel some of those same frustrations toward me.
When my boys were growing up, I thought being a good mother meant making sure they had everything they needed. Food, clothes, birthday parties, rides, help, support, and a safe place to land. I did those things gladly because I loved them more than anything. But now I think motherhood is less about providing things and more about patience, tolerance, compassion, and acceptance. I think one of my biggest mistakes was believing that because something mattered deeply to me, my children should automatically feel the same way.
I wish my children visited more. We have lived in this house for over two years now. One son, who lives over a thousand miles away, has never been here. The other, who lives more than a two-hour drive away, has only visited once. I wish my grandchildren ran through the door excited to see me and threw their arms around me. I wish phone calls were answered and texts returned more often. More than anything, I wish we were all sitting around the same table together again.
I also wish my sons would do whatever is necessary to bridge the divide that has grown between them. The silence between the two of them causes me a kind of pain I cannot fully describe. Mothers want peace between their children. We want holidays without tension, conversations without history hanging over every word, and family gatherings that feel whole instead of fractured. But I cannot fix that for them. They are grown men now, and whatever healing happens between them is something they will have to figure out themselves.
But life changes. Children grow up and build lives of their own filled with work, stress, schedules, relationships, and responsibilities. They have children to raise, pets that need attention, jobs that exhaust them, and priorities that are very different from mine now. The older I get, the more I understand that loving your children does not mean you are entitled to their time simply because you want it.
That may be one of the hardest lessons motherhood teaches. Your children do not belong to you forever. They belong to themselves.
Still, that does not erase the quiet ache many mothers carry. The ache of missing people who are still alive. The ache of remembering little boys who once needed you for everything and realizing they no longer do.
One way or another, you eventually have to figure out how to make peace with how things are instead of constantly grieving how you wish they were.
Motherhood changes shape over time. When children are young, they need your hands. When they are older, they mostly need your understanding.
And maybe that was true for my mother too.
