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.

In the church where I used to go, they’d have a big celebration for Mothers. And give them a single red rose, or carnation. Guess who didn’t get one? Well that is, until finally someone in the church, probably somebody like me, said “hey! This sucks.” And I started being included.

But I still didn’t really belong to the club.

It’s an odd world for a single woman with no kids. Other people have to find things to ask you about since they can’t ask the normal things. How are your kids? Husband? House remodeling?

All the things women love to talk, or complain-brag about, are off the table. So you have to give them things to talk about: an alternate identity as it were. “I’m a traveler. A scuba diver. A photographer. A violinist.” Whatever it is, you have to give them something to ease their plain discomfort with your condition.

When they haven’t seen you for years, as one former boss hadn’t, and see you in the hallway at work, they need to be able to say, “Been anywhere cool lately? Any new artwork?”

Men and women alike are uncomfortable with lack of conformance to the marriage and kids thing. 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 helped. People feel awkward in new situations, so you have to—mother them.

And there it is.

Most estrogen-based women, whether they 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 something.

For years, I mothered my family. They probably 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. When the lonely, unsocial guys I befriended because nobody else would, started to like me, I had to unmother them again. They sure appreciated it. But not so much at home.

When I got into my 40s 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.

The reason? I’d already spent years battling a debilitating and painful chronic condition where some days I could barely care for myself. It seemed brutally unfair to subject a child to my whimsical-style illness that came, went, and twisted itself into various contortions from one minute to the next.

After moving forward with the baby idea, then stopping when I felt it still wasn’t right to a kid, I knew I needed a solution. One Mother’s Day the choice became clear to me: it’s a baby or a cat.

And there he came. A black, short-haired kitten scampered over to me across the floor at my friend Sharon’s house. Again. And again. And again. And I was smitten.

I’d seen the ad in our church bulletin: kittens for adoption, Sharon W’s post said. After finding the right Sharon W, I’d found myself one weekend morning in a sun-splashed porch, surrounded by furry kittens and an exhausted momma cat.

He became Skertzo. My kid at last.

I’d had Skertzo for a few years—or rather he’d had me, when I realized I needed more. Roots.

A few years prior, I’d had an incident where I picked a lilac branch from the park on my way to work, savoring its petals and smell, feeling acutely devoid of a place to call home. As I sniffed my stolen lilac, a passing commuter called out to me. “Hey. You shouldn’t have picked that,” she emphatically said.

Something inside me imploded. Angry at her for ruining my happiness, I threw the lilac on the floor, yelling back, “Some of us can’t have lilac bushes, you know.”

Instantly, she felt terrible. Seeing she’d really made me sad, her apologies followed me all the way down the stairs to the train. I looked back sadly at my lilac on the floor, wanted it intensely, but to make her feel worse, I never went back.

I’d always regretted it.

What happened to my lilac? I’ve always wondered. The one I dashed in pride? 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.

It was on Mother’s Day again, a few years after I’d gotten Skertzo, that I realized I needed roots. All these years the lilac I threw down at the train called out to me. It was a part of me that wanted to be alive, but wasn’t yet. To experience what I hadn’t: stability. To have beauty. Something that was permanent, and mine.

So that day, I took myself over to a local flower shop. “I’ll get a lilac bush,” I told myself, “whether I’m a renter or not. I just hope the landlord doesn’t notice.”

I got two.

Purple and white, they just celebrated their third Mother’s Day, as Skertzo enjoyed his 10^th. They’ve bloomed and thrived, and like the cat, gone through sickness and health. And they’re my first roots.

It’s still not easy being me. Most women won’t talk to me much or invite me places. There’s actually little to talk about, if you don’t do children. But I found my gifts.

My black and purple kids were just the right additions to my little family, at the right time, to feed a momma soul. Because every woman is a mother. The difference is only who—or what—calls her that.