Unhappy Mother's Day

These days are hard. Not because I don’t have a mother, no. My mother, Brenda, lives on healthy and well, and I am very fortunate to be her daughter.

I grew up in her single-mother household and saw her work so damn hard for us ungrateful, demanding, and selfish three kids. I didn’t know then it wasn’t normal for parents to work in excess of 12 hours a day. For weeks, then months, then years on end. How she still attended our band recitals, sports competitions, and even had time to pursue her hobby and passion, gardening, is beyond me. She must have had some arrangement with the universe’s timekeepers, because otherwise I truly do not know how she did it all.

No, today isn’t hard because I don’t have a mother. It’s hard because it also serves as an anniversary of my brother’s car accident. An alcohol-fueled accident involving just his vehicle that was in all likelihood an attempt to take his life. It’s a powerful reminder of the role and relentless grip that addiction still has on our family. We had hoped it would have ended with our late father’s passing, but addiction and mental health is a wicked beast.

Today is hard because it marks another milestone. It’s almost a month until Father’s Day, and I no longer have a father.  I have not celebrated a Father’s Day since I was 12.  More than the absence of my father, it was hard seeing my mother unsupported by an immediate partner.  Perhaps seeing this lack of close companionship in her life forced me to lean on my other communities early on in my own life.

Sports, band, part-time jobs, church all become parts of a network that made me feel safe, valued, and challenged.  Of course I felt those things at home from my mother, but it still felt somehow incomplete without a pair of parents sharing the roles and responsibilities of raising three very different kids.  I no longer say it’s a deficit or an absence I feel everyday. Rather, it creeps up at inopportune and unsuspecting moments.

So long 33, hello 34!

Well, 33, you’ve taught me a lot. I stepped out of my comfort zone multiple times, and have been richly rewarded. I suffered defeat in the professional sphere that’s added to my uncertainty of remaining employed in the forest industry. More of that later. Or not – I’m still coming to grips with the possibility of a soft exit strategy from an industry, and ultimately an identity, that I’ve proudly worn for more than a decade.

My birthday has long marked a transition point. It’s the start of summer season, the shedding of winter’s cool and dark embrace, a return from foreign travels. From student to worker, from unemployed to frantically refilling my bank account, from office to field, as if the entire bush is open for business on May 1.

Summers have always meant work. Silviculture workers are not afforded the luxury of “summers off”, “holidays”, or “a week at the cabin”. Rather, my birthday marks the start of a condensed season of intense physical effort to collect data, wrangle contractors, and maybe even sneak in a lucrative fire deployment. I push my body and demand it relearns how to penetrate thick alder, swim through aspen and cottonwood, traverse over slash taller than me, and delicately dance with devil’s club.

And I lose. I fall. Over and over and over again. My body telling the familiar tale as bruises, cuts, and grazes cover my limbs.

This year feels different. That familiar longing has waned, my desire drained. Perhaps what was once a novel and desirable way to spend summer has now become mundane. Former excitement and anticipation have been replaced by familiarity and predictability.

Too scared to outright quit – for now – I have relished in my after-hours life: The soccer games that carry on til late. Book club gatherings that pass in what seems like minutes as we alternately howl and then cry over the events in the pages and each other’s lives. Intimate live music events that stir the soul. Intense off-mat conversations at the yoga studio. Raucous apres swim socials that shut down the restaurant.

Ultimately it’s community and rich relationships that have held me as I contemplate next steps. I don’t have an end destination in mind, but I am thrilled to share the journey with so many supporting friends, co-workers, and teammates.