While running last weekend I began to think about how much has changed in the last five years and how one of the only things that remains the same are my legs pushing off the pavement. For years after my mother died, I would think backwards, and wonder where I would be if she was still around. So much time has passed, and so many things have changed that it's become impossible to trace where I could be now if she was still around.
I think a lot about how I would have probably made some choices that wouldn't have been the best choice. For example: law school. Although I wanted to be an environmental lawyer, more than anything, I wanted job security and I wanted to attempt something no one in my family had attempted. I thought it would make my mom proud to be able to tell people her daughter was a lawyer. When I lost her, this changed. Not the making her proud part, but my reasoning for basically all my choices going forward. Because when you lose something you could never fathom losing, your perspective is altered permanently - this is the "paradigm shift" you read about. I felt like I had nothing left to lose and this meant there was nothing left for me to do but be brutally honest with myself.
When I made the choice to study environmental science I felt like I was slipping into something that fit me just right. Not because it was easy or familiar, but because I was acknowledging my passion and at the same time, honoring an incredible legacy left to me by my mother. My mother's dad was a forester, and her grandfather a farmer. We never had the chance to discuss it, but I don't doubt the influence they had on her choice to become a landscape architect, just as it's impossible to deny how this has influenced my path, even when I didn't think I was letting it. My mother's death, in some ways (and this will sound strange), pushed me to be what I truly wanted to be, and now I feel like I'm able to hold onto more of her by not only honoring her legacy, but making it my own as well.
Ironically, when my mother died, my sister's path also solidified. Our mother, as a guidepost, was physically removed from our lives and we were forced for better or for worse to build our own. Maia's journey after we lost our mom deserves its own blog post entirely, but what is relevant to this, is the fact that Maia may not have been able to do what she had wanted to do with our mom around. We certainly know she would have been proud of us, no matter what kind of careers we chose, but Maia reminisces about our mom saying "whatever you do, don't become a teacher." And this affected her, whether she fully acknowledged it or not. Our mom felt like teaching was the most unappreciated professions out there and being appreciated was something she really valued.
We're able to laugh now about how Maia's first job out of college was tutoring at a Charter School in Roxbury - a traditionally underserved neighborhood in Boston. And how she took an even harder job afterwards: mentoring and counseling abused teenage girls. But our mother's influence lingers. Even if Maia thinks she's doing the opposite of what our mom would have wanted or expected. Our mom's last job was building affordable housing in some seriously run-down, underserved (or in some cases blatantly ignored) Boston communities. Both Maia and myself have taught and mentored in these neighborhoods because of our mother's work.
A fantastic moment came a few summers ago when we were visiting our grandmother in her retirement home in Zagreb, Croatia. Our grandmother was never one to gush about finding an emotionally fulfilling job, she was more pragmatic than that. Can you pay the rent? How will you pay back all you student loans? But the loss of her daughter, even at her old age, had changed her perspective. We were discussing something about work, and looking away from us and out her window she muttered (roughly translated) "whatever makes you happy." Now when we see her, questions about our jobs are quickly followed by a question we rarely heard from her in the past, "but, are you satisfied?" And we give her our honest answers.
I guess spring will always emerge, even after what seems like the darkest and coldest winters.
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