It started Friday evening, when Mark gave me my first present -- a homemade keepsake box. I oohed and ahhed over it, but Mark didn't get it.
"There's nothing in it," he informed me. "It's EMPTY." He clearly didn't understand why his teacher forced him to give me a box with nothing inside. And he certainly didn't believe I loved it, no matter how many times I told him, because why would anybody love an empty box?
On Sunday, Mark brought me breakfast in bed, which my cats immediately tried to eat. I shooed them away and read my homemade cards, but Mark kept nudging my gift over to me. I could read the See's Candy logo through the paper. He kept eyeing it, and pushing it to me, until finally I ended his misery and gave him a truffle. He was ecstatic.
It was a far cry from my very first Mother's Day. That one turned out...well, not quite as well.
It had been a couple months since his birth parents' rights were terminated. He'd been calling me "Heather" up till then, and I waited before evolving into anything else.
But I realized it was time. Mark had lived with me for almost five months, and the whole "Heather" thing was getting kinda weird. People assumed we were mother and child, but introductions were always kinda awkward.
"Ask your mom if you can have a cookie," people would say, and Mark would yell out, "Heather, can I have this?" It really confused the other kids in his class when he called me Heather.
So about a month after he last saw his birth parents, I decided it was time. We were goofing around, and I told him I was changing my name.
"To what?" he asked, curious.
"To 'Mom,'" I told him. "From now on, I'll only answer to 'Mom.'"
He giggled and thought that was great fun. And of course, he immediately tested me. "Heather, can you tickle me?"
I looked around the room. "Did you hear something?" I asked him.
He giggled again and asked, "MOM, can you tickle me?"
"Certainly!" I cried and tickled him till he couldn't stand it anymore.
It was funny for the first day. He'd follow me around the room, calling me "Heather -- I mean, MOM."
It was a little funny the second day. By the third day, he was downright annoyed.
"Heather, when's dinner?" he'd ask, and I'd keep doing whatever I was doing.
"I only answer to 'Mom' now," I'd tell him, and he'd grit his teeth and say angrily, "Fine, Mom, when's dinner?"
After a few days, Heather faded away completely. He went from "Heather" to "Heather -- I mean, Mom" to just plain old "Mom." It was awesome.
By the time Mother's Day -- my first! -- rolled around, I was so excited. I'd worked long (almost three years!) and hard to get to this day, and I wanted to celebrate. I'm a MOM! I wanted to shout from the rooftop, but I realized that perhaps this day wasn't as joyful for Mark. I was sure he was missing his birth mom, so I tried not to make a big deal about it all (outwardly, anyway).
Mark presented me with a gift -- a photo of him smelling a giant Gerber daisy. It was beautiful, and I teared up immediately. "Thank you, honey!" I said, hugging him, and suddenly, his mood turned completely.
He grunted angrily and ran away. Just then, the doorbell rang, and in came some friends I'd invited over for dinner.
I couldn't wait to show them my new picture, but dinner and the conversation distracted me. I didn't remember the picture until dessert.
But I couldn't find it. It had disappeared, and when I asked Mark about it, he shrugged and walked away. I searched a bit more, when suddenly I walked past my new paper shredder and my heart sank.
I opened the shredder, and there on top were the tiny ribbons of what was recently my Mother's Day photo. My heart sank and I started to cry; at first, because he'd shredded the picture, but then because I realized so many of our "first" special occasions (Christmas, birthdays) ended up like this. For Mark, as a confused little boy missing the only family he'd known until recently, these were sad, not joyous, occasions. They were obvious reminders of what he no longer had. And though I knew he loved me ("just a little bit"), he felt disloyal to his original family, and confused.
And so I took it down a little. I downplayed the picture and played up dessert instead. That made him a little happier, but still, he watched me warily, even a bit defiantly. You are not my mother, I could almost hear him say, and I realized that today was not the day to wage that battle.
In fact now, three years later, I've realized it was never really a battle at all. I don't want him to forget his birth family; I never will, because they gave me the greatest gift of my entire life -- my son, Mark. For that, I am eternally grateful.
And so when Mark presented me Friday with a box -- an empty box in which he saw no worth -- I smiled. It wasn't thrashed or kicked in; it wasn't shredded or wrecked; it wasn't handed over with anger or disdain. Instead, it was painted red ("Because that's your favorite color, Mom") and lovingly decorated with plastic flowers and beads. And three days later, it looks exactly the same -- I checked the shredder all weekend, and found no box, no flowers, jammed in there.
It's funny how you measure love. For some, it's all about the big shows of affection. For others, like me, it's more about the quiet victories.
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