Happy "Ma's" Day

Ma!

Mom.
Mommy!!!!!

Mother.

Four names for the same person.

What do you call the person who brought you life?

For the first part of my life, I used the colloquial Midwestern “Ma” to address my mother. The term “Mother” seemed too formal. It’s what I heard my uncles call their mom, my grandma. When I think of “Mother”, I think of Dwight Schrute talking about his deceased parent being buried in the back field behind the barn. I can’t bring myself to using it.

If you grew up in a small Michigan town in the 80s and 90s, you know what you called your “Mother.”

It was “Ma.”

“Ma” was used all over town when I was a kid.

“Get back home or I’ll call your Ma!”

“What are you boys doing? Where’s your Ma at?”

Grandma would call and say, “What’s your Ma doin’ da’day? Wonderin’ if she’d run up to Sugartown and grab me a gallon a’ melk?”

I recently watched a VHS tape of myself opening a Sony Walkman on Christmas morning sometime in the mid ‘90s. My reaction?

“Ah, Ma. Exactly what I wanted!”

These days, I just call her “Mom.”

I’m amazed by this person I met when she was twenty-six-ish, and I was zero years old.

If you think about it, your Ma is the first person you really meet in the world, other than the doctor. After the nurses leave and the doctor takes off, you’re left alone in that room with one person: your mom.

Then you go home and get introduced to the rest of the cast members in the show. Siblings, pets, relatives, neighbors, family friends, and so forth. But during that first stretch of life, your Ma is the one who feeds you, changes you, rocks you to sleep, wakes you up, and makes sure you stay alive in the world.

That’s not to say dads don’t help. I know I was deeply involved in raising my own boys when they were babies. But I’d be remiss to gloss over the special role their “mommy” played in those first hours, days, weeks, and months of their lives.

My first memory of my Ma was probably around preschool age. I remember her walking me down the street to the local school and dropping me off at the door. As a parent now, I’m awestruck by the fact that I can barely remember anything about my mom before the age of five. No, scratch that. I can’t remember a SINGLE thing about anything before the age of five.

That’s wild to me. Someday, my own boys, as adults, probably won’t remember much from the first chapter of life we shared either.

Now that I’m a parent, I fully understand the significance of those early years with young children. I’ve seen the special bond my boys share with their own Mommy. The snuggles, the books before bed, the songs in the car, ice cream cone dates after school, bike rides around town, and so much more.

The irony is that even though they may not remember those moments, we will.

While one can’t remember anything about that time period, another remembers everything.

To my boys, their early years are just a blur of time that gets lost in the haze of memory. To their Mommy and me, it is one of the most special seasons of our lives.

As they get older, their memories sharpen. They begin remembering grade school teachers, friends, classmates, and neighbors. But over time, the canyon slowly widens between mother and child.

In my earliest memories, my Ma was the classic Midwestern homemaker. She yelled up the stairs to get us out of bed and had hot breakfasts waiting downstairs. Cocoa Wheats most mornings, pancakes and eggs if we were lucky. She got us to the bus stop or drove us to school before heading straight into the hot lunch kitchen to volunteer with the morning crew.

She ran the concession stand at school games, coached middle school track, and could be heard from the stands at nearly every sporting event.

I credit my love of reading and writing to her example. She always had a book nearby. Still does.

She taught us the importance of hard work, physical activity, healthy eating, and education.

No matter what fishing stream, distant bike trail, or far edge of town I wandered off to, I always knew I’d eventually race back home through the neighborhood streets and find my Ma standing in the kitchen bay window. A beacon of home. A pillar of light.

Today, she is still at the center of it all. Ten grandkids and one very spoiled dog.

You can still find her immersed in a book, yelling from the stands at games, lecturing us about how to coach our own kids’ teams, walking the beach pier, or standing at the kitchen sink cleaning up breakfast dishes.

Whenever I spend a weekend with her at the beach house on the west side of Michigan, I feel a little guilty watching her cook breakfast, clean the kitchen, vacuum the house, mop the floor (by hand), and start a load of laundry.

“Mom, we’re adults. We can handle this. Let me do the dishes.”

“I got it,” she says. “Go relax.”

I realize now it’s never really been about the work itself. It’s not about babying us or refusing help. It’s about holding onto that little remaining piece of “Ma.”

Even though her boys are now in their forties, she’s still their Ma.

Sure, we could clean the kitchen or do our own laundry at the beach house. But for a few summer days each year, I just step aside and let her be my Ma.

I wish I could give you back your twenties and thirties- the best years of your life, so that you could have chased a career. You did the impossible- went back to school after the kids were grown, earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Social Work, and started a business. I imagine you in that role in your twenties and thirties and I wonder what kind of career you would have built. I feel bad that you had to delay the strongest years in adulthood just to raise us. You spent time serving hot lunch at the school and coaching track, while you could have been building a business.

You sacrificed your ambitions to help us fulfill our dreams.

You know what’s crazy? If I could turn back the clock of time, I know now that you’d probably have the same response as you do now.

“Go relax. I got this.”

Thanks for everything. Now, as an adult, I see not just what you did for us, but I see you as a person.

Happy Ma’s Day.