All creatures black and purple

I don’t like Mother’s Day.

As a single female with no kids, it’s the one day of the year I’m reminded, well, of that. Publicly.

At the church I used to attend, they’d have a big celebration for mothers, asking them to stand up as they were all awarded a single red rose, or carnation. Guess who didn’t get one? As Beyonce knows..."all the single girls."

Well the ouchies continued until finally someone in the church, likely a girl like me, realized “Hey! This sucks.” And we started being included.

But I still didn’t belong to the club.

It’s an odd world for a single woman with no kids. Especially if you also lack a house or a dog. Since it's not obvious what to say, other people have to cast about to find other things to ask. The normal topics people hide behind to create basic but shallow conversation--How's your kid? Husband? Remodeling? Fido?--don't apply.

That also means that all the things women love to boast about or, as I call it, "complain-brag" about are also off the table. So you have to "give them something to talk about," to invoke Bonnie Raitt: an alternate identity. “Me? I’m a traveler. A diver. A photographer.” Whatever it is, you have to give them a cheat sheet to ease their discomfort with your noncomformity. Especially when they haven’t seen you for years--like when a former boss passed me on the street--they need to be able to ask as he did, “How's the photography?”

Men and women alike are super uncomfortable with lack of conformance to the marriage and kids thing. Like a child in a performance that's always grabbing at their clothes on stage, looking around at the audience, or being afraid of forgetting their lines, they're nervous. It’s even more shocking if you accidently—or purposefully—insinuate this is your choice. Now, you’re a freak, too. What normal woman doesn’t want a children, a house, and a man? (Usually in that order. Sorry guys.)

Me? I’ve learned to help them in their discomfort. I learned this early on, because I’m a fixer. For some reason, when I see people in distress, I do things. So giving them a conversational crutch to lean on by crafting an identity they could talk about helps. People feel socially awkward if they think YOU are, so you have to—mother them.

And there it is again. Mothering.

Most estrogen-based women, whether we have kids or not, are care-takers. It’s in our DNA. We just can’t help it. It’s actually really uncomfortable for us not to pitch in when we see something or someone in distress, even if it’s just social.

Just helping random people not feel awkward isn’t enough though, for women with a maternal instinct. We actually have to mother a living thing. Like, for real. For some women this is their siblings, some choose plants, while others volunteer.

For years, I mothered my family. They likely don’t realize it, but I did this by fixing. Ever since I was a child, I tried to fix problems in our conflict-ridden family. I did the same at school. There, when the lonely, unsocial guys I befriended--because nobody else would--started to like me, I had to suddenly unmother them again.

This worked ok for a few years. But when I got older, the lack of something to mother became acute. By this time I’d already had baby angst for a decade—so strong in fact, that a male friend of mine got infected with it, and had his own kid with a girlfriend. But still I didn’t.

After taking at stab at the baby idea, then stopping when it still didn't feel right for me,  I knew I needed a solution. One Mother’s Day the choice became clear to me: it was to be a baby or a cat.

And there he came. One sunny morning, at the house of my friend-with-many-kittens-to-adopt, a black, short-haired kitten scampered  to me across the floor. He hopefully sniffed at me, bounced, then played. He ran off, and came back. Again. And again. And again. And I was smitten.

He became Skipper. My kid at last.

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I’d had Skipper for a few years—or rather he’d had me, when I realized I needed more. I'd found my type of kid. Now I needed some roots.

A few years before Skipper bounced into my life, on yet another sunny morning, I’d picked a lilac branch from the park on my way to work. Walking into the train station with my prize that I planned to put on my desk at work, I was intent on savoring its petals and smell. I was lost to the world, enjoying its yumminess--yet feeling acutely aware that I didn't have a place where I could have grown such lovely things myself.

Alas, I was found out. As I sniffed my delectable stolen lilac, hoping nobody had noticed, a zealous eco-friendly commuter  berated me as she hurried past. “Hey. You shouldn’t have picked that,” she chided.

Something inside me imploded. Irate at her for ruining my moment, I slammed my lilac on the floor, yelling back, “Some of us can’t have homes with lilac bushes, you know.” Feeling angry and guilty, I wanted to cry with grief as well--at what I didn't have in life, and the moment I'd now lost.

I'll show her, I thought. Let me ruin her day like she ruined mine.

It worked.

Instantly, she felt terrible. As her apologies followed me all the way down the stairs to the train.  I mournfully looked back at my lilac on the floor, wanting it intensely, wanting it so bad. But to make her feel worse, I never went back to pick it up.

I've always regretted it. What became of my lilac? I've always wondered. The one that all of a sudden, represented my unexpressed dreams. I'll never know. Did someone pick it up, or was it wasted there on the floor? Maybe someone even stepped on it. Lilacs don’t live long, after all.

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It was on Mother’s Day again, a few years later, that I realized I needed still needed the roots and dreams from that lost lilac. All these years, I'd never gotten over the sadness I felt when I walked away and left it to die on the floor. Oddly enough, in my mind, I'd picked it up over and over again. It represented a part of me that wanted to be alive, but wasn’t. I desparately wanted to experience what I hadn’t: stability. To have beauty. Something that was permanent, and mine.

So I took drove myself excitedly over to a local flower shop. “I’ll get a little lilac bush,” I said. "I'll make my dreams of roots come true, whether I’m a renter or not. Why wait forever, for an ideal situation, for what might not come? It's time to move into my life. Today. I just hope the landlord doesn’t notice.”

I got two. (And he didn't.)

My purple and white lilacs just celebrated their third Mother’s Day, while Skipper snored through his 10^th. The flowers have bloomed and thrived, like the cat, surviving sickness and thunderstorms, and  basking in the sometimes-rays of the sun. As I write, both bushes are full of blooms.

I sit by them every day.

Sometimes, with cat.

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It’s still not easy being me. It never will be. Most women still won’t talk to me much or invite me places. There’s actually little to talk about, if you don’t do children. And they certainly don't want me around their men. Or their friends. But I'm ok. I've made my choices. I've adopted my type of kids.

My black and purple kids--joined by a pink fairy rose bush on Mother's Day last year--have been just the right additions to my little family. They fed that need inside to take care of, to nurture.

Because inside, nearly every woman is a mother waiting to happen. The difference is only who—or what—calls her that.