Cycles of life
Some thoughts on the Bourbon Brood and Mother’s Day
What is that?
When Nino and I stepped out onto the front porch this morning, I heard the strangest high-pitched sound, somewhere between a whine and a hum. When the wind is right, you can hear the drone of traffic on the interstate, but a) there was no wind and b) this was not that sound.
As we set off down the road, I noticed the sound getting louder every time we got near a wooded area, which happens a lot when you live in southeastern Kentucky.
Then I started noticing the bodies, the shimmering wings veined with gold, the scarlet orbs of bulging eyes. I realized I’d seen a couple the other day, but there were more now. Brood XIV of the 17-year cicadas, aka “the Bourbon Brood,” has arrived.
As I walked, I did some mental math as to when they last would have been here, trying to figure out how I apparently had missed it.
2025-17=2008.
That explains it. The first half of 2008 was one of the hardest times I’ve ever lived as human and especially as a mom, a period so difficult that it subsumed that entire year and then some. I can’t even tell you when my mind, soul, and body started to come back online, only that I’m not sure they would have if I hadn’t taken up writing.
As I’ve written before, I became a mom through adoption without nearly enough understanding of what that meant both for myself and especially for my children. I knew far too little about childhood trauma, about living as a transracial family, about grief and loss. I spent so much time trying to learn, through books and through the internet.
It helped…sometimes.
The good thing about the internet in the early-mid-aughts is that groups and discussion forums had been established for pretty much everything under the sun. I connected with families adopting from India, women choosing to build their families through adoption, parents of children with untreated clubfoot, couples adopting older children and/or sibling groups, and eventually, families facing attachment disorders and early childhood trauma.
The bad thing about the internet in the early-mid-aughts, is, well, everything I just wrote. So much advice, not all of it good, and so much shame. If you do x, you’re a bad mom, but if you do y, you’re even worse. If you do a, b, and c, it will work, but only if you do everything 100% right. If things are getting worse, it must be your fault. If they’re getting better, thank the program you’re following.
If you think this sounds impossible, that’s because it is. And spoiler alert—it did not make me a better mother. I missed out on so much connection, so many opportunities for joy.
Now I’m watching my eldest in the third year of her own journey through motherhood, and I’m pretty sure if anything, the internet, especially social media, is making that road even harder than it was the last time the cicadas came around. For all the good information out there—there is plenty, to be fair—there are even more formulas, more “hacks,” more judging, more shame, not to mention an ever-growing sense that motherhood is some kind of competitive sport.
Then again, maybe every generation feels this way. It’s not as if we humans have the luxury of burrowing into the ground for the bulk of our children’s formative years. Nor would I want to. We do, however, have the right to let ourselves off the hook and enjoy what Ruth calls a “quieter Mother’s Day” in this column dated May 14, 2000.
Rural Reflections
By Ruth Dennis
How about a quieter Mother’s Day?
Happy Mother’s Day! By now, the children have served breakfast in bed to their mothers, the cards have been opened and read, the gifts unwrapped and soon families will be getting together to “take Mom out to dinner on Her Day.”
Perhaps this Mother's Day will be a more quiet celebration. Some of the family may have to work. Some may live so far away that the telephone call and the “Happy Mother's Day” greeting will be the closest personal contact.
This Mother's Day, I am thinking about some of the gifts I have received that have meant the most to me. These are not tangible gifts, but ones more everlasting.
After our mother died, my two brothers and I planned a memorial service to her. We agreed that it was her gift to us that we would remember. Each of us had our own special gifts from her and it was these that we shared with her family and friends.
Now, on this Mother’s Day, I continued to thank my mother for these gifts. She gave me the ability and strength to believe in myself. She would understand my hesitations, my self-doubts but would not let me yield to them. Perhaps it was her innate Yankee independence that she was passing on to me—this gift of belief in myself.
I received many special everlasting gifts from my mother. One of the most rewarding has been the love of books and reading. This began with her first bedtime stories. Books were birthday and Christmas presents. When I got my first library card, a whole new world opened. I read novels, biographies, non-fiction. I am currently reading a collection of short stories, a Tom Clancy thriller, a biography. My mother would understand this—this was and is her love of books and reading that she gave to me.
This Mother's Day, I can once again appreciate those many gifts from my mother-in-law. It wasn't always easy, those first years together. We came from too two different worlds.1 Looking back on those years so long ago, I can appreciate how much she gave me. She gave me understanding and encouragement. She gave me the gift of acceptance, that in reality, we would be sharing love—each in our own way. We would be sharing—not competing. From these beginnings came a special and cherished relationship.
Remembering these gifts from my mother-in-law, I add those from my daughters-in-law. They are so much alike, these gifts. Love is shared and in being shared grows. Our differences are our strengths. With each of my daughters-in-law has come the gift of a special and shared relationship.
Now, the grandchildren have brought their grandmother full circle with the challenges to keep on learning, giving, caring and sharing. Perhaps at this point in my life, theirs is the best gift of all, this Mother's Day.
Happy Mother's Day. Enjoy the presents, the flowers, the cards, the day itself. Cherish the intangibles—the gifts that remain long after the day has passed.
I corrected Ruth’s (or the newspaper’s) typo, but I wanted to leave the original, as there were probably days that the worlds Fannie and Ruth inhabited prior to 1944 felt too different, too.