Hello Family & Friends!
This Mother’s Day I will not receive a Hallmark card, a dozen roses from ProFlowers, or a box of Shari’s Berries. Not because I am estranged from my children, or because they met some tragic fate well before their time. But because they have four legs and fur, and find it difficult to order gifts online. Yes, I am a bona fide “fur mama”!
Until I adopted a beautiful, but troubled, off-track Thoroughbred, nicknamed Blackie—saving him from the horrors many former racehorses face—I never thought of myself as maternal material. Born in the 1950s to a young and charming but alcoholic mother who made the distraught protagonist of Diary of a Mad Housewife look like the quintessence of mental health, I grew up being wary of motherhood and unable to free my mind of her recurring lament, “All I have is kids, kids, kids!”
In those day-dreamy moments of childhood in which time has no place and inhibitions no bounds, my best friend and I would imagine our future incarnations. As we wiled away those precious hours, many riding horses and playing with our dogs, we often wondered, Who would we each become? I recall her unequivocal intent to be a mother someday. An Agua Caliente Cahuilla, whose mother revolutionized tribal politics to escape the grinding cycle of poverty and provide her and all members of the tribe with a better life, she simply had no doubt about her destiny. At such a tender age, I could not fathom her certainty, because all I could hear in my mind’s ear were my mother’s toxic and sorrowful words.
As an early adult, I watched my friend become a parent, not once but thrice, and I often thought she had to have skipped a developmental phase or two. But, there was never any evidence that she had. She radiated only joy and commitment in her personal choice about motherhood. With the benefit of maturity, I gained greater understanding about her youthful conviction, eventually realizing how some women like her precociously determine their fate, but this allowance did not alter my own ambivalence about becoming a mother.
In observing her adorable infants grow into beautiful toddlers, and then smart, compassionate, and engaged teenagers, I still did not catch “baby fever,” no matter the exposure. Instead, I remained focused on my career. And, as the years passed, I never experienced the ticking of my “biological clock” either. It was not that I felt it and then ignored it, but rather, I didn’t feel it, period.
Yet, as my father has wisely said over the years, “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.” When I first met Blackie, I was a thirtysomething professional woman devoted to my work. Married without children—to a man who also came from a broken and alcoholic home—I had recently landed a new job in a new town. But unlike the city where I lived before, this small town’s suburban ranch-living easily accommodated the equestrian life, and I was soon tempted into returning to the wonderful world of horses where I had found such refuge as a child.
Little did I know, however, that, in the simple, straightforward conveyance of Blackie’s Jockey Club papers, I had signed adoption papers, of a sort, for our first “child.” In transitioning Blackie from a racehorse to a riding horse, I confronted trials of many kinds, some life-threatening, while I learned to calm his temperamental mind and volatile behavior. As I struggled to tame this “wild child,” though, I discovered he was not the only one who had demons to slay.
In juggling him and my new job, I eventually found myself confronting crippling assumptions I had as a feminist “career girl.” Rooted in both family dysfunction and cultural expectations, these beliefs had me chasing one more professional achievement after another. There was always one more project to complete, one more mountain to climb, one more thing to prove. As the power struggle between Blackie and my work reached a fever pitch, however, I was unable to ignore its implications.
While I had never feared my natural aging and decreasing fertility, I did begin feeling an insatiable desire to spend more time with Blackie, to be present to care for and guide him during the best years of his life. My fight for life-work balance was a sign that my relationship with Blackie had moved well beyond a custodial role and grown to be more like a mother’s than a horse owner’s. When I was more worried about his physical health and mental well-being than my own; when I took better care of him than I did myself; and when I willingly sacrificed for him in ways even some of the most devoted horse people couldn’t comprehend, I knew that Blackie had become like a child to me. Through his charms and challenges, I had slowly and unexpectedly stumbled into another kind of motherhood.
As I happened upon my own version of motherhood, I started charting new waters and seriously contemplated quitting my job and going freelance. Leaving the institutional cocoon to work independently, however, was a daunting prospect. Yet, after a year of agonizing deliberation, I finally resigned.
Within weeks of setting up shop on my own, I rescued a young female Black Lab who was just minutes away from being euthanized. Gentle and shy, this one-year old stray dog was the opposite of my “wild child” Blackie. As my “mild child,” she would not leave my side and followed me wherever I went, which explains her name, Shadow.
Taking care of Blackie and Shadow filled me with a kind of gratitude and sense of satisfaction that no professional achievement could provide. I realized that by bringing them into my life, I had changed it forever and for the better. In nurturing them, I was fulfilled in a way I had never been before. Embracing the idea that I was another kind of mother, a genuine “Fur Momma,” I loved Blackie and Shadow as members of a new kind of family.
Fur Moms like me will not enjoy the kinds of gifts that traditionally mark this special day, but we will be given something else utterly marvelous and nearly indescribable: our fur babies’ unconditional love.
On the occasion of Mother’s Day 2020, I send all my best wishes to Fur Moms everywhere, celebrating them for bringing animals into their homes and for all they do to make their lives better. Whether they be fur mamas who include dogs, cats, horses, and other kinds of pets as part of their traditional nuclear, extended, or blended families. Or, are empty nesters who continue to enjoy animals long after their kids leave home. Or, are young single women who cherish and care for fur babies before embarking on making human children. Or, are childless, like me, and who love their pets as full members of their family, no matter its type.
I offer these heartfelt wishes on the eve of reopening our world, which was so cruelly and abruptly interrupted by Covid 19. May this be a new beginning for all, including our beloved four-leggeds.