Umbilical cord, apron strings, heartstrings.

Is there any connection more foundational than our first?

Check out my mother, likely around the age I am now - early fifties - looking like she just celebrated her 35th birthday. The woman is, and has always been, stunning.

Mom and me

She had me at 23, was divorced by 26 and raised me mostly alone, and much later, my sister too. Without the benefit of a traditional education, she worked her way up at Disney to vice president of business affairs, spending 10-hour days doing deals and zooming laps around that office until past the age of seventy, when she finally retired.

We talk everyday: she is still sharper than me and just as beautiful, but these days what I notice more is how much she makes me laugh, and also how much she roots for me.

Mom and sister

In all my thinking about connection lately, I’ve especially been thinking about mothers. As I sit here, perched on the edge of an emptying nest, I find myself bothering everyone: I nag my young adults as I attempt to let go of them while also trying to keep them safe/make sure they know all the things and then I nag my mom as I attempt to hold onto her, to keep her safe/make sure I know all the things.

It’s a lot.

More than anything, it’s a kaleidoscope, this middle place. In the faces of these people I love so deeply, I see the shapes of all the people they’ve been, filtered through the light of who they are now. In my 17 and 20-year-olds, I catch glimpses of their former delightful baby-ness, them as an impetuous toddler, a serious elementary school kid, a middle school athlete. In my mother, by turns I spy the loving caregiver, the supportive friend, the trailblazing powerhouse who showed me what’s possible with smarts, grit and perseverance.

My daughter and I

May these primal connections buoy us. May we see our past and our future all mingled up - with all the messiness of life and being human - and take it up in our arms like we would the toddler we once were or the toddler we once had and embrace it, loving with all our hearts, not holding back, not waiting for later.