a mom koan for her birthday on january 4

If your birthday rolls around but you're no longer on the planet, does it still make sense to celebrate?

Today would have been mom's 77th birthday.

I know there are many people still breathing who remember this fact. Excluding learning history by rote, dates stick in our memory because of associated emotions that have burned through our minds, sometimes searing our spirits in the process. Trivial as a moment of discomfort at a family gathering and moving as a loved one's grief. Do you mark every moment of joy? Calendar your happy times?

I'm hardwired to recall mostly positive emotions. Fortunately, I'm also a better learner when provided with a carrot, not a stick. So my emotional ledger is not so good on specifics, but full of hazy happy times and vivid laugh-til-you-cry scenes. Many of these episodes feature mom in the cast of characters.

You see where I'm going with this. Usually, the way it works is you have a sad experience which equals a sad memory. I have thousands of happy experiences and many of them involve mom. She hasn't been erased. Her absence has been highlighted. All the associations that used to be happy are now colored with sad, an emotion that I'm not used to feeling. Though I prefer sad to numb, which is how I spent 2009.

The timing of mom's terminal illness turned our decades of happy holiday times into a dense layer of heartache. Of course, true to our family's karma, we got an extra helping of ludicrous on the side [Not Maudlin Mom Archives - December 2008], including; flood, major power outages (2!), formerly evil grandmother with dementia, and forced home renovation that required us to be out of the house through Christmas.

Because my numb wore off in 2010, I cried pretty much throughout the holidays (see above). Very weird. I've never had a rainy season before. As soon as the formerly happy holiday events were over, my emotional storm dissipated.

Mom's January 4 birthday always signaled the end of the holidays and the start of a new year. I'm hoping 2011 will fade the sad overlay and the happy will start to shine through. I want happy and sad to be separate, but equal. I know that's as unrealistic and ridiculous as Jim Crow laws, but I have not gotten used to the taste of bittersweet.

Zen koans are about finding the true self. Mom koans always demanded a bit more.

So I'm going to celebrate her birth day today, by remembering her as she was with me which is, not coincidentally, also how she loved me; challenging, competitive, stubborn, dry, rarely motherly, insisting that I always be the "bigger person," inquisitive, goofy, adventurous, smart and loyal beyond reason.

In some mysterious way she embodied all those qualities in a package that was laugh out loud funny.

Happy Birthday, Mom. You are loved and missed.