A Hug from Mom

Answers to life's big questions

Feb 03, 2024

When I was young, life troubled me. There was just so much about it that I didn’t understand and couldn’t get it right. And the things I wanted -- even needed to know about — were important, like how to do my work, raise my children, live my best life. So, I went about trying to figure it all out like we all do. I did this by listening to others, like my teachers, elders, and experts, you know — other people. Turns out, I was my own best teacher. It just took time for me to understand the lessons in my own writing.

(If you are under 50 and reading, skip the next paragraph. It contains a spoiler.)

The answers came—and I mean almost all of them. The answers to the most fundamental questions came as well as the answers to those existential ruminations (you know the ones, the ones that wake you up at 5:36 AM.?) The answers will come for you too.

You can believe me. I am 60.

But here’s the thing -- you may not like them.

This all came to me early this morning at 5:36 AM., when I should have been sleeping. This used to happen to me all the time, and when it did, I’d take it to the page.

Recently I was asking myself “why don’t you write anymore?" I am writing all the time; I’m writing right now! It’s just not that early-morning journal writing anymore. And it's not because, as the joke goes, I’ve thought all the thoughts. It's because today I have more answers than questions.

I received the answer to the “Big Question” over 30 years ago.

It was 1990, the year the New York Yankees played and won another World Series and I’d stayed up late watching it with my son. I was a full-time, working single mother and needed all of my sleep, but burdened with the curiosity of a young mind navigating a young life, I awoke early the next morning and took it to the page when I wrote:

“Last night I was remembering important things. Like taking walks and having the time to notice things. With all this death stuff, I keep thinking how much we are just animals. I would like to believe that we are better, or different, but I don’t believe we are. I actually believe that we are just highly evolved animals, a genetic mutation on this planet – all science, and it depressed the hell out of me. I am scared, and mad, and determined to find out if there is more.

But then last night I knew that love is the answer, in spite of the question. Just love. Trust in spite of the fear—Give in spite of anything. Love in spite of all the questions, in spite of all the reasons not to. Love is what helps us see into something more than this world. When we are gone what will we have -- that we loved.

Love is the answer.

Not profound? I told you, you may not like the answers.

Imagine my surprise, then, that this morning’s thoughts, thoughts that came “in and out of the stream of thoughts” (as my meditation app describes them), with sufficient force as to cause me to leave the warmth of bed and, again, take to the page.

I was trying to take the narrator’s advice and allow my thoughts to “float down the stream of thoughts” but couldn’t stop thinking about a hug I’d shared a few hours earlier with our youngest son. He’d driven the seven hours home from college to visit his girlfriend’s dying grandfather in the hospital. My thoughts were self-congratulatory, all, “look at you raising a good one...only 21 and he gets it”, when the next thought came “floating down the river of thoughts” and smashed into an embankment (or whatever the app was now saying).

I haven't shared a hug with our oldest son in five years now--the same five years in which he has purposefully chosen not to include us in his life.

Love is the answer.

A lot of what I’ve been reading recently, trying to finish the memoir that will not let me finish it, speaks of writing as a pleasant activity, something akin to getting a manicure. Writing is self-care! It is healthy and good for you! Or my favorite, writing provides a sense of community!

Writing isn’t any of this for me. For me writing is a way to ask and get answers to life’s questions. Whether or not I like the answers.

It is February. Twelve years ago this month, my mother died from Stage 4 metastatic lung cancer and was buried at Calverton Cemetery, Queens in the middle of a particular punishing Nor'easter. I miss her terribly every day.

If you are young or life is troubling you, go to your teachers, elders, and experts – seek their advice, opinions, or knowledge. I hope it helps. Or do as I’ve done and take it to the page. See if the answers aren’t there. Although you may have to wait a long time to understand them-- and you may not like them.

And while you're at it, see if a hug with mom helps. As the yogi’s say, “If that is available to you.”