I hate Mother’s Day. As much as I try to ignore it or not make it about me, every year it hits me just as hard as it did as the first one without my kids. Of course Mother’s Day sucked before I left their dad — I know I’ve written about that somewhere on this blog — but that was a different type of suck. That was due to him making me feel inadequate as a mother. “You don’t deserve a Mother’s Day present — I do!,” he said on more than just one year. Sadly, I thought he was right.
But after leaving him and becoming estranged from my children, Mother’s Day is painful for the obvious reason: I am not with my kids. I am not able to mother them, even though I am their mother. I am like a superhero who has no opportunity to use her superpower. I’ve tried to find other outlets for this pent-up energy: preschool teacher, “homemaking,” doting on my husband who takes in my love like a sponge, which is a wondrous experience as loving my ex-husband felt like trying to caress a stone. My latest release has come through adopting dogs, one of which immediately loved me the best and even gave me the title of “Doggy Mom” with my mother-in-law. She bought me socks that say so. We all know why my husband got me these dogs: not just to give an outlet for my motherlove, but also to offset the pain, the big hole that is always there in my heart.
That is not to say things are all awful for me. I know I have it better than a lot of alienated parents. Some parents have no contact at all. Some parents have children who hate them, and of course this goes for non-alienated parents as well. Honestly that might be worse than what I am going through. My kids at least have mostly, at least functionally for the moment, come to terms with me and what happened. They are living their lives. They are doing well. And from what they say they have forgiven me and sort of get it and anyway for sure know that I love them. I am sure every day must still be hard for them, as it is for me, and there must be times when they have their doubts, especially my oldest. After all, I always keep in mind and make no excuses when it comes to the fact that they, not me, are the true victims in this situation. I am always grateful and relieved that whenever we speak and text, no matter how much time has lapsed, it is always in a loving way and we reassure one another of our desire to be together and that we care. At least I hope I am doing that for them.
So what is so hard about Mother’s Day, or any other day without my daughters? I think it’s this: that feeling that I am not doing enough. Normally I would be cooking for my kids, making their lunches and washing their clothes. I would hear about their friends and the day-to-day details of their lives. Also hanging out and cuddling. Those were the best things about parenthood for me. We always managed to have a good time, especially when their father wasn’t around. Our Friday night ritual for a few years was to, after their gymnastics class, go through McDonald’s drive thru or order Dominos (American food) and go home and watch a movie together while their dad was attending a leadership seminar and/or drinking with work colleagues. It was our guilty pleasure, our one little breach in the grind of our daily lives under his control. We ate on the tatami mats or sometimes, gasp, even ate in the car on the way home.
That feeling of not doing enough is brought on by others’ expectations and by expectations of society in general, especially around this time. We are bombarded with messages about what a mother should be. One recent article in a newsletter I almost always find nurturing and insightful insisted that, “The role of a mother is infinitely complex and one of pure tenderness, compassion, and unflagging loyalty.” It’s the last one that gets to me. Am I unflaggingly loyal? Couldn’t I have done more, fought harder? Shouldn’t I be doing more to show my love to my kids on a daily basis?
My feelings came to a head a couple of weeks ago when I met a colleague of my husband who was also divorced from a Japanese and who also had a daughter around the same age as mine. He had stuck it out until she was 16 and managed to forge a somewhat working relationship with his ex, even though she had threatened to keep their daughter from him and technically has custody over her, though at this age (now 17) is irrelevant for the most part. He moved to the U.S. while his daughter chose to stay in Japan. Originally she was going to go with him but in the end decided to stay. I could tell it was all still fresh to him and he was really struggling. But at the same time I wasn’t prepared to handle the projection of his feelings onto me.
But that first night we met I didn’t know any details about his situation. My husband didn’t tell me anything about him at all regarding his daughter and I went in blind. Just a couple cocktails with a work friend from Japan, I thought. But, things got deep fast and before long we were both over our heads in our raw emotions and me, at least, Mai Tai’s and Hawaiian Ice Teas. The conversation turned more into an interrogation: what are you doing to get your girls here with you? When do you think they will come? What is your plan, what is your timetable? I had no concrete answers, but just a general hope. A general belief that good wins over evil, love will prevail, and things will work out in time if I keep on having faith. While he too believed in these things, he said, he assured me this wasn’t enough. I needed a game plan and needed to be proactive and deliberate in how I was going to make this happen. And, as it ended up, he was going to tell me what to do.
On the way back to our hotels, he asked me how often I talked with my girls. Not texted, but spoke. When I told him once every two weeks, his jaw hit the sidewalk. “I talk to my daughter every day — every day! You have to make that happen!”
It hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d left myself vulnerable and wide open and he walked right in and smacked me. Before I knew it I was running across the street, pushing the elevator buttons and trying to get to my room before I had a breakdown. What had I been thinking, moving to Hawaii and leaving my kids in Japan? This was unconscionable!
To my surprise — and his kindness still comes as a surprise to me every time — before I knew it, my husband was there in bed holding me, telling me he gets it, he knows how hard this is for me. I sobbed and let everything out. “Your relationship with your girls is just your own and doesn’t need to be compared to anyone else’s,” he assured me. “Don’t listen to him.”
When I later confided to my best girlfriend about what happened, her words too gave me comfort: every mother thinks they could have done more. So, in that case, there’s nothing special about my situation. I am just like any other mother in the world, trying to make my love known to my kids the best I can. It may not be in the ways I wish I could, or in the ways most mothers can, but I am still doing the same work. Maybe next year, or one year, I won’t see Mother’s Day as a personal assault but will see myself as one too. And, I will keep on hoping as I always do that one of these days we will spend it together again.
