Year One - Coming into Color
Over the last year, my life has transformed in ways I could never have anticipated. I became a mother to a vivacious Miss Lila, whose big, beautiful laugh constantly keeps me on my feet and tugs at my heartstrings. My capacity for love expanded tenfold as I stepped into this new role and began moving through the world not just as myself, but as someone’s mother.
Anyone balancing multiple roles knows that one eventually becomes dominant enough to shape all the others. For me, it became motherhood. I suddenly had to nurture, create, protect, and remain constantly present in a way I never had before. More than anything, though, I found myself walking in my mother’s footsteps without her beside me. She continued what she started, or maybe what her mother started before her, through me and now through Lila.
Losing my mother only a few months after becoming one myself felt unbearably unfair.
I was angry that I couldn’t call my mom when I was exhausted after the fifteenth sleepless night and ask her to come over. I was angry that I still had to wake up the next morning, go to work, make decisions, and prove myself in a new role as a design planner while quietly falling apart behind the scenes.
When I accepted what felt like my dream role, I had not anticipated how difficult it would be to hold ambition, grief, motherhood, and exhaustion all at once. My Type A personality wanted to excel in everything at once. Instead, I had to learn how to prioritize quickly and accept that survival itself sometimes had to be enough. I also underestimated how much energy leadership and visibility at work would require from me. By the time my introverted self came home, there was nothing left, and any parent of a young child knows there is no such thing as true solitude anymore.
I was mad that I couldn't call my mom every morning to talk about the little things that drove me crazy about Thomas, as we adjusted to this new normal and figured out how to do things as a family instead of falling back into the familiar, independent ways of being a couple.
Neither one of us expected this season to be so difficult. We had been together for over a decade. We had traveled extensively, shared finances despite having completely different habits, and survived working full-time while both of us pursued graduate degrees. But parenthood exposed entirely new fault lines. Suddenly, love alone was not enough. We had to learn how to function as a family instead of simply as two highly independent people sharing a life.
The first time I watched my dad hold Lila, it took my breath away. Every moment he spent playing with her reminded me of the love that shaped my childhood. Even something this beautiful felt incomplete because my mom wasn’t beside him, exchanging knowing glances with me and beaming with the kind of joy only the two of us would have understood.
Aside from the significant changes, I missed my mother in the smallest moments of my life. I didn’t have anyone to coo with about the silly things that only mothers and grandmothers can be proud of. I had nobody to incessantly bore for hours with details that were only meaningful to us. I had nobody to dissect, relive, and extend the joy of something so insanely insignificant that I felt cheated out of what was supposed to be the best time of my life.
The little things...like how she falls asleep singing as my mother does, or that she figured out how to stack furniture so that she can climb around with the nimbleness of a little monkey. At a moment’s notice, she can transform like a ferocious but lazy kitty cat, not wanting to be disturbed as she looks out the window from our 43rd-floor apartment, takes it all in, and finally surrenders to sleep - undefeated and on her terms. You get the picture.
But lately, as I lie next to my little kitty watching the sunset and singing the same silly songs my mother once sang to me, I find myself coming full circle. I realize that my mother still exists in all of my gestures, in every ounce of kindness I can muster on difficult days, and in the quiet wisdom that surfaces through memory when life feels unbearably heavy. What once felt black and white slowly begins to return to color.
A week ago marked the first anniversary of my mother’s death. Over the last year, I learned how to rebuild a public version of myself while privately grieving someone who shaped nearly every part of me. Slowly, I began returning to color. As I continue figuring out who I want to become, I hope to carry forward my mother’s grace, generosity, and softness not by becoming her, but by allowing what she taught me to live through me.
I started last year asking the universe, "Why me?" and a year later, I have come to accept, but more importantly, rejoice that I had such an excellent relationship with my mother. I will never get to see her grow old, but she, in turn, left the world a better place just by being in it.
I have heard so many stories about how my mom touched the lives of those around her, and I am honored to be her daughter. To have her legacy preserved, honored, and extended.
She has left me with so much, but most importantly, she has left behind a legacy in the family and friends who have rallied around me, Thomas, Lila, and my dad in a way we had never expected. We are immensely grateful for all the love and support as we adjust to this new reality that has somehow become our life. You all know who you are, so all I can do is say many thanks.
As I start this year without her, I hope that I can find a way not to become her because she is irreplaceable, but to learn from the two truths that made me (her and my dad), and hope that I can honor who they are and will continue to be for me, and live a more authentic and whole life.
