To All the Feral Moms
Honoring mothers and motherhood in its full complexity.
Happy Mother’s Day to all who celebrate: mothers, grandmothers, birth mothers, earth mothers, fur mothers. To the ones who wanted to be mothers but it didn’t happen, and the ones who didn’t want to be but it did. To the aunties, cousins and even the uncles, grandpas, and dads who are mothers too. To all of us, really, because we are all together in this circle of caring – for the next generation, for each other, for the earth.
I’ve just returned from an epic trip to Nepal (more to come on that later). While I was away, Goldie, one of the feral cats my husband and I look after, had kittens. Five little nuggets whose whole world is a deck chair on our back porch. They’ve just opened their eyes, and spend most of their time sleeping in a cuddle pile.
We’ll get her fixed once she finishes nursing, but meanwhile, watching Goldie become a mother has been quite touching. She was a tomboy before, always galivanting around the village. How, then, did she learn to retrieve a fallen kitten, scruffing him in her mouth and hoisting him back onto the chair ? To nurse and lick them clean? Her mothering moves are on point. Never especially affectionate in the past, these days she is quick to come over for strokes and even lets me lift her up for a kiss.
For many, relationships with our moms are fraught. So much is encoded into that bond. To honor the beautiful complexity, I’m proud to offer four different takes on mothers and mothering from Certain Age writers.
In “Mourning (Becomes) Joan”, I remember my own mother, Joan. She was brilliant, wounded, funny, alcoholic, deeply loving — and impossible to reduce to any single role. From late-night phone calls to hard-won forgiveness, it’s a portrait of a mother-daughter relationship transformed by honesty, humor, and time.
Shanti Chandrasekhar’s “A Different Keepsake” captures the complicated tenderness between a daughter and her dying mother. Returning home from India after her mother’s final illness, the narrator realizes the real inheritance isn’t financial support or family duty. It’s the memory of being kissed goodbye.
In “The Opposite of Faith”, L.S. Taylor writes with unflinching candor about parenting a child who struggles with rage and mental illness. This isn’t a sentimental Mother’s Day story — it’s a raw exploration of the loneliness, guilt, exhaustion, and fierce love that can coexist inside motherhood.
Amy Losak’s “Salad Days” looks back on shared diner meals with her mother in Queens — chicken salad platters, endless tea, lingering conversations — and the quiet lessons her mother taught her about paying attention, slowing down, and savoring ordinary life before it disappears.
Your turn. In the comments, share a few words about your own mother if you’d like. And however this day lands for you, I hope you know how glad I am that you’re here.
xo Jean
Jean Shields Fleming is the founder & editor-in-chief of Certain Age. Her novel Air Burial was published by Carrol & Graf, and you can read an excerpt from her latest novel, All The Reasons Why.