Mother’s Day makes for many, many feelings.
Throw a global pandemic into the mix, and we’re all tiny children in a feely field of goo.
If you’re able to spend this Mother’s Day hugging — actual, arm-involving hugs unmediated by Zoom — your ma, I both envy and salute you.* Hug her tight. Hug her repeatedly. Let her make you grilled cheese and ask if you’re drinking enough fluids.
If you are a mother, once again I salute you — in these homeschooling, all-under-one-roof, nurture-needing days, more than ever. You are one of my heroes. You are living one of the highest possible callings of a human. Let your loves treat you like the queen you are. Feel your infinite worth. (And make sure everyone is drinking enough fluids.)
But if your maternal situation is complicated by distance, quarantine, empty arms or delicate details you’d rather not discuss with cats and strangers on the internet, Mother’s Day is still going to find you. You’re still going to feel the feelings. And, as always and ever, the cats are here for you.
The longer I observe cats and the people who cherish them, the more I’m convinced that, although we fill their first-order needs for fish mush and veneration, it is they who fill our far deeper needs and voids.
When nobody knows the troubles we’ve seen, along comes a cat like Mary to mother us.
When we ache to inhabit a calling that’s cracked in one way or another, along comes a kitten like Cotton to need our nurture.
When we’re confused and confounded and betwixt and between, along comes a whole host of huggable beasts, simultaneously needing our maternal best…and nurturing us with something that can only be described as motherly.
Do not be deceived by Gogi‘s absurd cuteness or Circe‘s wee baby face. Most of all, do not dismiss the deep sense of meaning and mystery and motherhood that surges in you when you cradle them or sing to them or love them so hugely it almost hurts.
There is mothering here.
There is love large enough to gently rock us all through this emotional Mother’s Day.
There is something divine at work, and we will all, all, all be held.
Even me. Even you. Even now. Especially now.
And if all the fields of feelings have you yearning to Do Something, I would shamelessly point you to Tabby’s Place. Since you may not be able to hand your Mom a fistful of wildflowers or an angel figurine, you may want to consider making a donation in her honor, or a Virtual Gift Basket that nurtures mama cats and kittens. Check ’em out. We can send your e-card within a couple of hours, so you have time, but not much.
Here ends the fundraising pitch.
But the yearning, the loving, and the mothering goes on. Let’s shelter each other on this tender holiday and always, kittens. Happy Mother’s Day.
*My Mom and I are so close, people say we should sue the writers of Gilmore Girls for copyright infringement on our souls. She is the coolest, bravest, most beautiful woman in the world, the ultimate cat lover, and the reason I find it natural to believe in a loving God. Here ends the hagiography, though I could go on indefinitely. She is also 2 1/2 hours away, and we’re all frickin’ locked down, and I will be hugging her via the infernal, indispensable FaceTime. Suffice to say: I need and miss and love my ma!