Spring, Mothers, and the Work of Becoming

This year will be the first birthday where my mother is no longer on this earthly plane. She was born on the Vernal Equinox, so the turning of the season has always carried the memory of her with it.

As a first-generation Mexican-American on my mother’s side and fourth generation on my father’s, family has always mattered deeply to us. Even in difficult times, my parents remained committed to the family they had created. We did not have much growing up, and when my brothers arrived with special needs, everything had to stretch even further. Yet my mother always made certain we had what we needed. In many ways, that is my mother in a nutshell.

When I was very young, a fissure began to form in our relationship. I can clearly remember our time before, and after that age. Going to preschool opened the world to me in a way that changed my life, and that shift was difficult for her — and for us.

She was never the mother I imagined I wanted, but she was the mother I needed and I told her this after the massive aneurysm that struck her down and eventually took her from us. I told her that I understood. Had she been softer or more accommodating, I would not be the person I am today.

We were very different people, and the choices I made were not ones she always understood or could relate to. She hoped I would stay close to home, raise my daughter within our childhood community, and focus on family. However I did not know how to be the person she hoped I would be, and the wider world called to me. My father encouraged me to be in the world that beckoned, and when I was eighteen, he 

flew me to college and told me that was where I belonged. From there on, my life unfolded in ways I could never have imagined,

Now, as I look at my own daughter, I understand that our choices are never only about ourselves. They ripple forward — to our children, and to the children they may someday bring into the world.

This first spring without my mother carries with it growth, renewal, and Metamorphosis. As the earth awakens from winter’s long sleep, I feel held by a larger sense of mothering — by nature herself, and by the memory of my own mother. In this way, her spirit continues — not only beside me but flowing forward through the generations that follow.

And so, as spring returns, I am reminded that transformation is rarely sudden. It unfolds quietly, generation by generation, in the hands and hearts that come after us.