Amy Clarke: I didn’t always know I wanted to be a mom, but once I decided, I knew in every fibre of my being that I had a lot to live up to.
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From the moment you become a mother, you are a mother for life. Every day. Every second. Awake and dreaming. You are mother and mother is you.
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There are days when you mother spectacularly, and others when your mothering leaves much to be desired — by you and your children. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you forget to plan your daughter’s first birthday because you’re too depressed to take action.
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My second daughter was born on Jan. 4, a raw time of year for many. A couple of years ago, as her first birthday was fast approaching, I found myself knee-deep in personal life sludge, making it difficult to move forward, to make plans, to bake a cake. Despite my best efforts at self-love, I felt like a failure. My highest self — the one unmarred by grown-up bummers like seasonal depression, mounting paperwork, shutting down a small business, an impending move and marital discord because of all of the above — is a woman who intentionally rejoices in making birthdays feel special. She hangs streamers throughout the house, just like her mother did for her. She bakes a cake and buys a tiny mountain of gifts, each wrapped in curled ribbons and paper in the most celebratory pattern she can find. She isn’t too blue to pull it together. But on this year, I was a worn-out shade of cerulean, frayed at the edges.
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What I remember most about my own birthdays are the buttercream rosebud florettes; tiny swirls of pastel icing lined the edges of my cake, year after year. The saccharine sweetness when it hit my tongue, and how my mom always made sure I got the biggest flower on my slice. This is the sort of mothering detail that will stay with your child for eternity. When I turned four, on July 19, 1991, my mother invited everyone any of us knew, as well as the entirety of my preschool class, over to our house to cavort in the backyard and enjoy an endless stream of pre-planned games and gags. She hung balloons with secret messages inside them from the high branches of the cedar trees, inviting kids to throw darts up at them until one popped and a treasure was revealed (don’t you miss the ’90s?) She hand-painted headless characters on all four sides of a tall cardboard box. One by one, as the box was placed over a child’s head, and their little face would pop through one of the cut-out holes with delight, they were transformed into a mermaid, a cowboy, an octopus or a Barbie doll while the moms’ 35 mm cameras clicked away. My mother somehow created a variation of this fabulousness at every childhood birthday of mine, and my sister’s, until my teenage years swept me off for the day, on to someone’s boat, or flopped on the beach with a cold drink in my ungrateful, little sunburnt hand. But there would still be streamers and balloons and gifts awaiting me in the morning. Always. In our house, you weren’t just the birthday girl, you were Queen For A Day.
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If this sounds over the top to you, just know that my mother, although extremely productive, is what I would call an artful imperfectionist. In fact, she’s kooky. Zany. Opinionated. She likes what she likes and scoffs at anything and everyone too polished, chic or “hoity-toity.” She works tenaciously at her chosen tasks. She is a lifelong learner, an educator and a counsellor. A helper and a bashful artist, through and through. A few years ago, just after she retired, she developed a passion for writing children’s books. But of course, she would also have to illustrate them. Her lack of training didn’t stop her from creating beautifully expressive drawings using pencil crayons, oil pastels and watercolours (sometimes all at once), each page a new style entirely. My mother sees things through to the end. Often imperfectly, but never wavering. I would highly recommend the remarkably original, self-published Dabby: The Upside Down Duck and Winny: The Counting Horse to any parent. She is all these things that I love about her, and so much more. She contains multitudes, as all mothers do. I didn’t always know I wanted to be a mom, but once I decided, I knew in every fibre of my being that I had a lot to live up to.
