Mother's Day when you are a geriatric teen mom is a layered thing. I want to tell you about the layers.
Layer one: the joy. My youngest made me breakfast. She set it up on a tray. She used the good placemat — the one we only use for things that matter. She made coffee and brought it before I asked and she sat on the edge of the bed while I ate and she was sweet in the unguarded way she sometimes is when she isn't trying to be a teenager.
I have adult children too. I have grandchildren older than my teenager. Mother's Day means I get messages from people across several generations — my kids checking in, my grandkids sending things, and my youngest right here in the kitchen with the tray. That layered 'Happy Mother's Day' from so many people in so many phases of growing up — that is not small. I feel the fullness of that every single year.
Layer two: I thought about Orlando. Every year on Mother's Day I think about her father. He would have made today a whole production. He was that kind of man — someone who marked the moments, who made sure you knew you were seen and celebrated. He is not here to do that now. That absence is quiet and real and it does not cancel the joy — it sits alongside the joy. That is how grief works when you have had enough time with it. It does not replace the good. It lives next to it.
Layer three: I thought about Kassandra. I think about her every day. Mother's Day has its own particular weight when you are a mother with a child you cannot reach. I light a candle. I say her name. I pray the prayer I have prayed for seven years. And then I come back to the table, and the daughter who is here hands me my coffee, and I hold both things at once — the missing and the present — and I am grateful for the grace that makes that possible.
Mothers Day is complicated for so many of us. You might be celebrating alone. You might be celebrating with the wrong person or without the right one. You might be missing someone who should be at the table. Your joy might have sadness in it. That is not failure — that is a full life.
Hold it all. The tray and the candle. The laughter and the prayer. All of it is Mother's Day.
Buckle up, buttercup. The complicated days are part of the beautiful ones. Let yourself feel every layer.