Mothers and Sons

Feb 3, 2009

A while back my Uncle Dave sent me this beautiful little vase that is about 50 years old. By visual standards, it isn’t much to look at really. Cheap, candied glass shaped into a fluted vase with a ruffled mouth. He won it as a child at a county fair for his mother, my grandmother. He sent it to me b/c I’ve joined a sorority of the most marvelous sort - mothers of sons.

I’m married to a son who has a mother. It’s crazy in some ways, b/c I’m so fiercely protective of this man of mine. I’ve been known to give the evil eye to women who give him more than a cursory once over. I’ve defended him to his sister, and other female relatives in both our families. But his mother - well, she’s a different story altogether. This is the woman who loves the man I love as much as I do. And that puts the two of us in a sisterhood different from any other.

When Paul and I were dating, Mary and I would size one another up on a regular basis. I would think of how things were going to be once we were married, without either of our parents meddling in our lives. I imagine she was thinking the same thing, but on a different level. I would watch her with Paul’s younger siblings and swear to myself I’d be nothing like here. . .and years later I find myself speaking the very words to my own children that I heard her say to hers. As a young woman I worried about the lack of a father in Paul’s life, and how he’d learn to be a dad to our own children. I see Mary’s touch all over him as a Daddy. Even without a man in their life, she coaxed manhood from him.

As a young bride, I felt like there was a competetion b/t Mary and I. There are but two great love affairs in a man’s life. The first is that with his mother, and the second is with his wife. In my youth I imagined I would liberate Paul from being “Mama’s boy” and it took many, many years before I realized I was the one being liberated from my own foolishness. The day I held our son in my arms, I immediately understood the power of a mothers love for her son. The competition ended that day, and I took on a newfound respect for this woman who loved the boy I was perpetually in love with. I saw this amazing, cosmic and primal connection b/t Mary and Paul and he put his son in her arms.

This year we are struggling to find our way as a young couple dealing with a parents terminal illness. I have watched this man I love go from stalewart Marine who can handle anything, to a six foot tall little boy who just found out his mother is sick and he can do nothing to protect her from the enemy that is devouring her. I saw again that powerful connection b/t Mother and Son, except this time it was in a reversal of sorts.

There is a beautiful relationship b/t mothers and their sons. As the mother of an 11 year old boy, I am now fully convinced of this. As the wife of a 38 year old boy, I am even more fully convinced.