It’s Mother’s Day All May, an essay series for May that explores the intersection of parenting and running. Enjoy!

On the day I graduated from high school in Pittsburgh, my mom moved to Florida. In the 30+ years since, we’ve never lived within a day’s drive of each other. Mostly, this is okay.

Our relationship has never been easy, which is a story I could never, ever fit into just one column. It has been unpacked, repacked, and unpacked again by more mental health professionals than I can count. It is, as they say, what it is. 

Know this, however: I love her. She is my mother. Five years ago, when she had an emergency quintuple by-pass, I spent an anxious week in a hotel in Valdosta, Georgia, followed by an ever-more harrowing year flying between here and there. Our relationship remains complicated but the last decade has smoothed many of the harder edges.

My mom, as a high school senior.

But for most of my adulthood, I didn’t really have the sort of mother that I could turn to for advice, guidance, and comfort. What I did have was a series of (older than me) women who filled that role, whether they knew it or not. Like the newspaper arts editor who frequently called my bluff and showed me how a smarter-than-she-knew woman could find her place in a newsroom. Or the theatre director who could cut to the heart of what wasn’t working while praising the heck out of what was. Or the moms-of-teens when I was a mom-of-toddlers who coached me through the small tantrums and sleep deprivation. 

I have been lucky. Whenever a new level of mom-ing was needed in my life, the universe provided. Sometimes, the help came a little bit later than I would have liked but no universe is perfect. We work with what we have.

Which is what my mother did, too. She did her best — but it might have gone differently had she found her own symbolic moms when she needed them when she was a younger person. We can only go forward.

I wanted to be a different kind of mother to my children than my mother was to me, one who was there for them but also very much aware that her only goal is to set them up for success when it’s time for them to be on their own. Eventually, I won’t be here to mother them at all. My job is to make myself obsolete.

One of my babies is nearly 19; the other nearly 16. My obsolescence isn’t here quite yet, but it has texted to let me know that it’ll be here sooner than I think. 

Yes, I know that motherhood never ends until you do, what with adult challenges and potential grandbabies, etc. But my days in the trenches of lunch packing and picture days has passed. If this were a fairy tale, I’m no longer the young woman collecting treats for my grandmother. I’m much closer to the crone in the woods who knows great wisdom and/or bakes children into pies. Bring it on, I say. The only part about it I don’t like so far is all of the chin hair. 

My children were in early elementary school by the time I started running. A few miles helped smooth out all of the mothering bumps along the way, once I go the hang of it. Now, I no longer run to get just a few minutes of peace. Mostly, my nearly grown kids are off doing their own things and I no longer need to flee to have enough quiet to function. But, now, the time on my feet smoothes my own passage as they grow up and out. 

My newest mothering mentor. We never knew each other, mind. She died ten years before I was born.

On my long runs, my new mothering mentor waits at the mid-way point. She’s no longer living and I didn’t know her when she was. Her headstone caught my eye on a run because you don’t meet many Lolos. I’ve sleuthed out her obituary because the internet is awesome. Lolo lived through a couple of world wars and a few pandemics. Along the way, she had a bunch of kids, at least one of which wanted to make sure she would always be remembered as “Mother.”

I have little conversations with her in my head whenever I run by. Sometimes, we talk about what’s going on in the wider world; sometimes, we talk about parents and kids. And, yes, I know I’m not actually talking to her — but I do think these moments are helping guide me into the mother I am becoming. One who is around to guide my own kids along their own paths, of course, but also one who is willing to serve as a stand-in for those whose own mothers aren’t available for whatever reason.

 I still might retreat to a cottage in the woods, though, once I reach full crone. As long as there are some running trails and some plump children to frighten, it’ll be perfect.

Adrienne Martini writes about more than running. Her most recent book is Somebody’s Gotta Do It: Why Cursing at the News Won’t Save the Nation but Your Name on a Local Ballot Can.