One mother’s unconditional love

Mother’s Day weekend is here, and we all know what that means: the phone companies, along with the local and Internet florists, will be working overtime. Candy shops will be doing a biggest-day-of-the-year business, and the restaurants will employ extra help to deal with the crush of regular and once-a-year patrons.

P.D. James once defined Christmas as “that annual celebration of parental guilt and juvenile greed.” Perhaps the opposite could be said of the festival of Mother’s Day, only now it’s a celebration of the children’s guilt for the inattention they’ve given Mother the rest of the year. Whatever the motive, a lot of mothers will be feted and honored for their share in bringing us into the world and nurturing us. But not Phyllis.

I should perhaps write a memoir about my own mother. And I could, since I miss her very much, especially her dry, acerb sense of humor and her no-nonsense approach to life. But my mother is the subject for another story. This is about Phyllis and a 1999 Mother’s Day I shall never forget.

Phyllis, an in-law married to the son of my first cousin living in Canada, is the mother of Michael, at the time a 12-year-old boy who had been born with cerebral palsy. He is an only child who has to be bathed, dressed and fed, much the same as an infant. Michael doesn’t talk, walk, or respond to anything outside his micro-world of very limited senses.

I thought Mother’s Day was an American institution to make the merchants rich; I didn’t realize that Canadians also observe Mother’s Day, but they do. I was invited in 1999 to visit Margaret and Douglas, Michael’s grandparents and my cousins, on the very weekend that they were celebrating Mother’s Day, with Phyllis and Michael as family guests. James, Michael’s very attentive father, was having a rare weekend off for a canoeing trip on a lake in a neighboring Maritime province.

When Phyllis, gifted with an athletic build, arrived carrying Michael over her shoulder, I greeted her with the warmth and admiration I’ve always held for her. She set Michael on the sofa, propped him up against a sea of plush pillows, chatting away to him and to us while, at the same time, removing his jacket and cap.

“Here’s my Michael, my big boy, my true love, my ray of sunshine.” She placed a bib around his neck and opened a plastic container of strained food. “My big boy with the big, big appetite.” She spooned the pureed fruit into his mouth, wiping his face and chin at intervals. And so it went until Michael had consumed his dinner.

While Margaret and Douglas prepared a sumptuous roast turkey dinner for the four adults – Margaret mashing the potatoes, Douglas carving the turkey – I, their guest, sat on a kitchen stool and chatted with Phyllis and her in-laws, wondering if I shouldn’t show more interest in her plight by holding Michael or making a bit of a fuss over him. But I didn’t. Instead I watched in awe and admiration as Phyllis mussed his hair with her fingers while making a loving comment and tickling his chest and arms. Michael could and did respond with a wispy smile to Phyllis’ warmth of voice, never condescending, never in baby-talk tones.

What did I learn that Mother’s Day? That Phyllis will be spared the pain of seeing her son tempted by drugs or alcohol or juvenile misdemeanors. That she will never lie awake at night wondering if Michael will drive home safely in the rain from the party for adolescents at the community center. She will never have to regret the mistake he made in choosing what she may consider the wrong career or the wrong girl to become his wife. Phyllis is mercifully exempt from that world of parental worry and anxiety.

But Phyllis, unlike most mothers, will also never know the feeling of Michael’s arms around her as he whispers “I love you, Mom” into her ear. Or see the birthday card he made for her of the purple and green robin in the lopsided birdhouse that is posted on the refrigerator door until the edges turn brown and curl. Or hear the sound of his voice when he calls long distance from Vancouver to say he arrived safely after a rocky flight across Canada. Nor will she ever know the joy of seeing Michael holding her first grandchild or telling her that, joking aside, she’s the greatest mom the world has every known.

But Phyllis, given her unbelievable physical and emotional strength, won’t dwell on this. She isn’t jealous or resentful or petulant. She loves Michael too much for that. Insofar as I understand her nature, it’s just not her style to feel sorry for herself or for Michael. “Michael is a gift that’s been given to us,” she once told me with complete conviction. “A gift for as long as we’re destined to share this world together.” And what a gift she has given to her son, who is now almost 20 and too heavy to be carried on his mother’s shoulder. For Michael’s parents the second Sunday in May is just that: the second Sunday in May. For Phyllis every day on her calendar is Mother’s Day.

Ralph Pettie, author of “The Farnum Brothers of Bucksport,” is a retired teacher living in Blue Hill.