Mother’s Day is a well-earned celebration of the selfless sacrifice it takes to be a good mother. And every good mother deserves a lifetime of praise.
Sometimes overlooked is the pain a woman feels when she is barren and was unable to have children. That silent awkward moment when you realize the pain of empty arms and an aching heart. Also not to be overlooked — the mother who had to bury a child before they had a chance to reach their full potential.
Mother’s Day is like admiring a beautiful rose. It’s delicate. If you reach for it or touch the delicate beauty of motherhood, you quickly learn it also hides painful thorns. It is no small job to be a mother. As with a pearl, beauty comes from pain as well as joy.
I had to learn how to grow from pain, because I am “that person” who was unable to have children. I am the barren woman on Mother’s Day.
On the Island, I was lovingly nicknamed “the Daffodil Lady.” I plant daffodils and gardens as random acts of kindness. My first “guerrilla garden” was planted 20 years ago at the headstone for a baby named Joshua. I don’t know his family, and I don’t know his story. I do know that somewhere there is a mother who is sad.
Planting daffodil bulbs is a symbolic exchange of pain in the winter seasons of life for the joy and hope that come forth when the daffodils bloom in the spring and we start our life anew with hope.
Two years ago, I tried a Mother’s Day experiment on the Island. I started my day with tears and sadness and was hoping the day would pass quickly. Then I thought to myself, If I am feeling this way right now, I may not be alone. I went to the Facebook Page “Islanders Talk” and I posted my Mother’s Day story, one that is honest and raw.
I decided to take action over the pain, so I reached out to see if there were other people who were also hurting and said, “If you are feeling sad and alone this Mother’s Day, how about you come and help me make a guerrilla garden makeover for a very deserving woman who has been a mother to many through her writing workshops at Renaissance House, Abigail McGrath.”
The outpouring of love was overwhelming, and the personal stories that people shared were incredible. I wasn’t the only person who was hurting. I wiped the tears from my eyes, went and bought the plants and materials needed, and then a group of what started as strangers but quickly became friends did a garden makeover for Abigail. We worked quietly and quickly, and the results were rewarding.
While we worked, Abigail was inside resting. We later learned that she had cancer; she died that same year in December. The beauty that came from this pain is that Abigail was able to enjoy her flowers and roses while she was still living. Also, the act of planting the flowers for her gave those of us working together a sense of family, community, and joy. The Mother’s Day story was only up for about three hours and then I deleted it to erase the footprints of our guerrilla gardening handiwork.
Later in the fall, I helped lead the planting of the giant daffodil heart in Oak Bluffs, also created in honor of Abigail McGrath. It contained 1,200 daffodils, and they danced in the spring in loving memory of an Island giant who was no longer with us in person, but forever with us in spirit.
The lesson I learned, and the challenge I would like to make for anyone who is feeling sad on Mother’s Day for whatever reason, is this: Turn your pain into beauty. Find someone you love and do a random act of kindness. Being kind brings forth healing, and we sure need both kindness and healing in our world today.
To all those who are hurting, know you are loved.
For the people who want to know why I drive a car that looks like Nemo, this is my story:
Happy Mother’s Day embryos
We were all sitting around a large table in a restaurant with four generations present for our traditional Mother’s Day lunch when a nice man approached with a basket of carnations and said, “I have a flower for everyone who is a mother! If you are a mother, would you please raise your hand?”
Seven out of the eight women there were reveling in this joyous moment. Choking back tears, I said, “Just give everyone a flower except me.” My mom and sister cajoled me by saying I was the mother of a dog and was a wonderful aunt. The fact remained, the empty feeling in my heart of wanting a child was still there.
As a newlywed, I was realistic that having lupus meant I would probably never have children, but I still hoped that one day it might happen. After all, I am a person of faith. My husband is a physician, so I thought that he was informed on how sick I was when we married and he would also be the right husband to have if I did get sick while pregnant.
The most predictable part of lupus is its unpredictability! Shortly after getting married, my husband noticed I was having difficulty breathing. I started fainting more often and was having chest pain. A rheumatologist mentioned to me that I might have a disease called pulmonary hypertension. That did not sound so bad — I mean, you take medication for high blood pressure, right? So, it would all be fine.
“You are going to need a right-sided heart catheterization to measure the pressure of your pulmonary artery,” the pulmonologist told me.
Wow, I thought, this sounds a little more invasive than my grandmother’s hypertension.
I didn’t realize that they were discussing a deadly disease process that is rarely associated with lupus and that with this diagnosis comes a very bad prognosis.
After hearing I did have pulmonary arterial hypertension, everything seemed to become a fog — heart caths, cardiologist, doctors, doctors, doctors … “but what about children?” I was told that even if I lived past five years, I could never carry a baby, because my heart and lungs could not handle the stress of a pregnancy and it would most likely kill me if I tried. This was much worse than not getting a carnation!
“Once you start these medications to treat the disease, you must never get pregnant. Your ovaries and eggs are going to be compromised by the medications.” The pharmacist told me all the warnings and side effects of the drugs, but all I heard was “never have children.”
The medications arrived, and I sat them on the table and stared at them and cried.
I tried to wrap my mind and heart around this and knew that God knew what was best for me, and that I was going to be “OK.” These medications were so expensive, and I was grateful to have them, really I was. But why didn’t I have peace?
Alone at home, having my time with God, I prayed, “Dear God, please give me the peace I need with making this decision to take this medication.”
My husband happened to come home early from work that night, which is very rare. He saw me crying and he put his arms around me, and he took the medications and put them away and said, “It’s not time for you to start this … not yet … you aren’t ready. It can wait.”
He held me in his arms and said, “I want you to call and find out what it will take to get your eggs frozen before you start this medication.”
I was never really sure how I felt about IVF, freezing eggs or embryos, but I had just asked the Lord to help give me peace, and at that moment, my husband came to me and suggested this as a way to keep infertility from being final for me, at least not at this very low moment in my life when I needed to focus on getting well.
I consulted with all my doctors asking their advice on this — cardiologist, rheumatologist, and pulmonologist — and everyone agreed it was a good solution for me, and they worked as a team to help me do it. At first, there was only one embryo, and I named him Nemo. I waited patiently, and two days later, there were two more … three embryos total. Yay! I was an embryo mother.
“There are three!” I announced to my husband, “and I have given them all a name!”
When I was first diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, I asked the doctor how many patients lived past five years. I was told, “There aren’t good data yet, because the drugs that treat the disease are new.”
I take my medication every day, and it has now been 20 years since I was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension.
Healing and time helped me to realize that loving a child doesn’t mean it has to be from my own body. Children do not recognize illness or disability; they do recognize love. I have given myself to helping children less fortunate in life. I haven’t made a decision on what to do with my embryos — they are in God’s hands, as am I; and there is no better place to find peace.
Mother’s Day holds hope, not tears. I know I will never be a “real” mother, but I learned that being a mother is about giving. It isn’t a day that is measured by who gets a flower and who doesn’t. What matters is the difference I am making in the world.
Personal side note
In my mind, Nemo was going to be a little red-haired boy that looked like my husband, Ian. He was going to be smart, silly, and courageous. In my mind, he would love books, fencing, cars, Christ, women, and would be raised in church. Knowing that in truth, he would have been the opposite of what I thought him to be.
My children would have been taught that loving Christ is a life lived by example, not words. They would have known that truly loving God means that you love ALL people and treat everyone of any religion or lifestyle with unconditional agape love. They would have known that faith in God is different from faith in religion, religious leaders, or people. They would know that we never judge people because we are commanded to love one another and be kind. Because kindness is a prayer and a principle that transcends every religious boundary!
I think Nemo would have been a little shy, definitely inquisitive, and sensitive, but he would have been brave and dangerous and would have changed the world!
He may have been a minister, plumber, ballet dancer, lawyer, poet, teacher, doctor, or president, but for certain, he would have been loved unconditionally! This is who my son would have been in a perfect world.
Two days later, when there were two more embryos, I named them Maureen Cecile (named after Ian’s mom and my mother’s best friend Cecile) and Marium Leah (Marium is the Hebrew name for “Mary the Mother of Jesus”). These were my girls. They were going to be smart, kind, and have a great sense of humor. They would have been brave and enjoyed ballet, maybe sports, but if they did like ballet, they would have been able to dance at all the best studios ever and would have had nice ballet shoes when they needed them. They would have loved math and science and would have enjoyed books, bugs, and flowers.
Ian would have taught our children French, and all of them would have learned to read and write Japanese and Spanish from the very beginning of their life. All of them would have learned music (piano for starters, but they would select their own instruments as they grew older. I would have really hoped for one of them to play the contra alto bass clarinet like me). I would have wanted them in public schools so they would never have a sense of entitlement, and they would have to clean the house and cut the grass when they were old enough to do so. Girls would be cutting the grass and cleaning the bathrooms, and the same for my son! They would have learned the principle of hard work and that household tasks would not differ based on gender. My son would know how to iron and set the table for entertaining, and my daughters would learn how to change the P-traps of the sinks when necessary.
We would have gone on picnics and gone camping in a tent and roasted hot dogs over an open fire and taken baths in ice-cold creek water (like I did growing up). Ian would have read them books at night, and we would have made it a habit to sit around a table for dinner with a linen napkin in our lap to learn proper table manners. Passing gas and burping would not have been allowed at the dinner table! But when we were camping, we would have food fights and spit watermelon seeds and see who could make the best-looking fake vomit. My girls may have been pretty, but they would have been taught that pretty comes from within and from working hard. My children would have been taught to respect their father and mother and would learn to open the door for the sick and elderly and to notice people who are suffering and in need of kindness, and they would know it was their responsibility to help people less fortunate. They would get to play in the bathtub with Barbie dolls or trucks, and could have had short hair or long hair. The most important lesson in life I would have taught them was to love the Lord with ALL their heart.
The thing I would want them to remember most about me would be that I loved them more than myself and I wanted them to be all they could be. I would want for them to grow into people that honor God and put others first. I would hope that they would learn to be good investors of their time, money, and emotions.
In the end, I would hope that they knew they were indeed the most special people ever in the world like my mom made me think I was, and that I loved them with all my heart and soul.
If I had ever gotten to be a mother, I just would have loved them.
Melly Meadows McCutcheon is a resident of Vineyard Haven.