The Crawl – A Column by Jordan Lanegan

The Crawl.

I am surrounded by mothers. They come in many forms, personalities and ages – older, younger, adoptive, step, single, married, military. I know churchgoing, cake-baking, field-trip volunteering, dinner on the table by six, ‘my children are my everything’ type moms. I know pot-smoking, mushroom-loving, concert-going, let your child run naked and free, ‘go outside, explore the world and get down and dirty’ type moms. I know all natural, no preservatives, no television or technology until after the age of five, ‘I sew my baby’s own clothes’ type moms. I know full-time working, gym-juggling, cheering in the stands at every game, Hello Fresh meal-prepped dinners, ‘I love my children, but being their mother is not enough’ type moms.

As different as they and their parenting styles may be, these women all have one thing in common: they are fierce, they are strong, they take no shit – and these very qualities are amplified and emboldened ten-fold in their little ones.

With Mother’s Day having just passed, I figured a re-cap on my youth and an ode to my own mama was only fitting for May’s issue. I’ll be the first to admit (and she’ll be the first to agree) that our relationship has certainly changed over the years, and not always in the bright light of how either one of us would have predicted it. There have been trying times. There have been tears and lashing out in anger and sadness on both ends. There have been months without talking because we’re both too stubborn (some may say to a fault) to step around our strong opinions and beliefs to give into the other. Hell hath no fury for the woman firmly planted in her ground – Godspeed to those who try to sway her.

Despite these growing pains, my mother is still my rock and source of inspiration at the core. She has been through some of her very worst nightmares, jumped through high, burning hoops and has come out the other side even more badass and resilient, battle wounds to prove it and all. She is selfless, determined, and capable of so much more than she has ever given herself credit for.

At nineteen, my mom married my dad, took on three step-kids and became pregnant with me. (Come to think of it, maybe it’s not such a surprise I myself eloped and got married at twenty… hey; like mother, like daughter). She was four when her parent’s marriage went off the deep end and her mother ended up leaving. Subsequently, she endured a wicked stepmom and even worse stepsiblings, a strenuous environment where the divide between ‘her kids’ versus ‘his kids’ was made clear as day, with her kids coming out victorious every time.

Little by little, my mother and her siblings all trickled out. First her brother, then her eldest sister, and finally at age nine, she followed suit and moved to be with her mom, where she would grow up in the backroad flats of Harrison, Idaho – a town of 250 people, max. The doe-eyed, rose-tinted, picturesque idea of a happy home was stripped from her and left behind in the shambles of her parent’s divorce, shattered, only to be pieced back together when she had a family of her own and a chance to do it right.

“What I wanted was to be a wife and mother and have my own family. I wanted to do it right… to raise my children in a home with both parents who demonstrated what a committed marriage looked like, a family life without divorce. Well, we know how that ended; but that was my goal and desire when I was a young woman.

I knew without a doubt that being a mother (a parent) was the most important job in the world. Society tried to make us feel, and still does, like being at home with our children made us less valuable to society, but that is so wrong. Being at home day in and day out, nurturing and developing our children is the most valuable way to impact our future.”

I was eleven years old, going on twelve, when my parents split after thirteen years of marriage. My mom knew divorce was nasty because of her experience, but I had no idea just how brutal it could get. You grow up in a home where, to your knowledge, your parents love one another, there are family cookouts, rad birthday parties, road trips and vacations, and they keep their marital troubles tucked safely far, far away from you, until one day, the secrets and troubles amass to such a heavy load that it implodes and there isn’t any distance far enough away to guard you safely from the hellish fallout.

I won’t bore you all with the details of the divorce, as most all of us have our own version to compare it to, but I will say that it marked a transformative turning point in all of our lives: B.D. (Before Divorce) versus A.D. (After Divorce).

B.D. looked a little like this: Dad was in the military, we moved around a bunch, he had a couple deployments and a lot of TDY trips. Mom had some jobs here and there but mostly held down the home front. I was reserved and shy and despised being the new girl. I had a speech impediment and fucked up teeth and my parent’s, for reasons unknown to me, let me have my way when I begged for a perm. It was not good. I wrote a lot and read a lot and I lived in my mother’s shadow.

A.D. looked a lot like this: Mom joined the military in order to support herself and me. My siblings and I endured a wicked stepmom and stepsiblings of our own, with time often spent daydreaming of the day we would tie them all to a raft and shoot them on their merry way down the river we lived nearby. Dad became someone I didn’t recognize, and mom became someone I didn’t see because she was training and then very quickly deployed. I had to move out from the shadows of my mother and into the light myself.

This is where my mother’s relationship and mine began to take its first strikes; the person she came back to after training and deployment was not the same little girl she had left.

“Post-divorce, we started losing that closeness and I saw less of me in you. You were changing and growing and becoming your own individual person, which is what we want and expect of our children, but as time went on and communication became less frequent, you changed to an extent that I started to feel like I no longer knew who you were.”

To her point, this is all true. I threw caution to the wind. I was more outgoing. I dabbled in partying. I didn’t call or visit as much. I got married. I put school on the back burner and traveled Europe alone. I got divorced. I dated a girl. I decided I may never want kids. My belief and value system began to differ in varying, important degrees to her own.

“It’s been a challenge learning to let go of my expectations of what I imagined our relationship would be like and instead just accept what we have. Relationships change with time and seasons, so I know ours will continue to grow and develop as we grow and change in response to life.”

And what more could you want from a mother than that? If my mom didn’t voice her opinion as loud and boldly as I voice mine, then she would not be the woman who raised me, and I would not be the woman she raised me to be. Our spells of disagreement and disdain pale in comparison to the realization that these quarrels only come from a place of love and compassion. And as more people in my life suffer from the loss of their mother (or father or any of their loved ones), one thing has become crystal clear to me: the bullshit family drama is just not worth it. At all.

What is worth it, however, is accepting that we are who we are, and they are who they are, and that’s that. Different generations, different life experiences, and different perspectives make for interesting banter. What’s worth it is checking in every week with a quick call or Facetime. What’s worth it is telling them you love them and squeezing them hard when you can. What’s worth it is knowing our days with our mothers are limited, so we sure as shit better get to cherishing them.

Mama: I love you. I miss you. I cherish you. And most of all, I thank you for all you have done for me and our family. I’ll be visiting you real soon. Xx