On my birthday.

It's my birthday, and like always on my birthday, my mother comes to mind. I don't know if it's normal, but I know it's what always happens to me on this day. I wonder if she thinks of it. I wonder if she wakes up in the morning and goes about her morning routine, then looks at her calender or computer or phone, and realizes what day it is. I wonder if she reminisces about what happened 32 years ago today. I wonder if she remembers how scared she was, how young she was, how ignorant she was. I wonder if she remembers the time, weight, length, color, and general look of me. I wonder if she remembers the fight over my name. I wonder if she thinks back and remembers my grandmother being the first to hold me, much to her disgust as I heard it, I wonder if she remembers that I was the first. The first of four. I wonder if she gets sad and thinks about who I am and where I am, if she regrets any of her choices that led her to miss my birthdays. I wonder if she could go back in time and change things if she would.

Would she still have me? Would she still choose him? Would she still have given me up? Would she still have cast me away? Would she still have kept me no closer than arms length? I wonder if she ever felt as I do as a mother. I wonder what she must have thought when she held me for the first time. I wonder if she cried when I was born. I wonder.....who she was then....and if I will ever know who she has been at any time in her life. My mother is 18 years older than me. There was a time in my life when 18 years seemed like a lifetime. Now, though it doesn't seem that far away from me. My mother said she was proud of me two times in my life, the most important of these was when I turned 18, she said she was proud because when she turned 18 she had me. She said she was proud because I had not made the same mistakes.

I have indeed lived most of my life, as I believe most women do, trying to become something so far from anything my mother ever was. I wonder if I did it. I have craved a deep female bond with women my entire life, one that has eluded me, I blame this insatiable need on her. Perhaps if she had bonded with me I wouldn't crave it so much. I have tried for this most glamorous (in my mind anyway) relationship so many times and have failed miserably, I have resigned myself to wait until my daughter is old enough to have that bond with her. On this day so much more than others I think of my mother....my weak, ignorant, stupid, petty, beaten down, spiritless, meek, unhappy, confused, taken for granted mother. I am none of these things....I hope.....I have become a strong, intelligent, independent, happy, aware, loved and cherished woman.

I believe I have become who my mother should have been. I fear only weak women can grow, these kinds of women, I fear my daughter will be weak. I fear all the strength of all the women from so many generations back has all accumulated into me as one person, I hope I give my daughter this strength, of mind, spirit, body, and constitution. I wonder if my mother misses me. I wonder if she still worries about me, if she still stops on cool fall afternoons and whispers my name in the air. I wonder if she tears up at the thought that she will never truly know the woman I have become, or if she believes no matter what I will be alright, and comforts herself with this belief. I tear up knowing I will never know the woman she was, is or will be. I wonder if she knows she had more to do with the woman I am today than she realizes. I wonder if she knows and takes comfort in the fact that I am the woman I am. I wonder if she always knew I would be leaving, if she always knew in that strange magical way mothers do, that I was a shooting star in her life, that I would only be hers and with her for a short while. Yes, on this day more than any other, I think about my mother, my beautiful, innocent, hurt, disregarded, gentle, elegant mother.

I wonder.....I wonder if she wonders about me.