Spending your life mostly as a peripatetic academic – I taught at two universities and two colleges in Western Canada and the Arctic – as your kids are growing up leads to an extended family spread from coast to coast and in two countries. Most of that time I was a single parent, too, which gives a whole different emphasis to “mothering.”
But as I see the families my children have created, I realize that I didn’t, dammit, do too bad a job after all. No-longer-children and their children all seem to be happy and healthy and functioning well in their chosen lifestyles. Yes, we’ll have to “celebrate” Mother’s Day via Zoom rather than in person (Vancouver! Winnipeg! Toronto!) – but that’s OK. It’s the love that’s important, and that’s still there.
