A Mother's Day for me

Mother's Day used to make me cringe. I didn't want to think about it.

I would send my mother a card, order flowers for her, and then try to stay busy on her big day. I steered clear of the beach hotels and their "Honor Mom" brunches. Stalked past the orchid corsages in their clear plastic boxes at Winn-Dixie.

If one of those sappy mother-and-child commercials came on TV -- the ones for fabric softener, where an angelic baby snuggles in a blanket in Mommy's arms -- I'd hustle out of the room.

When you're not a mom, and your feelings about that are even the slightest bit conflicted, you do your best to ignore Mother's Day. You convince yourself it's a dumb, Hallmark-manufactured holiday. A bonanza for florists and candy companies and long-distance phone carriers.

All day, you feel surly.

This year is different. I'm 45 years old, and it's my first Mother's Day as a mother. Which is weird enough. But there's also the odd sensation that I'm a pretender, somebody who sneaked into motherhood by the back entrance. I feel almost sheepish.

And I have no clue how to celebrate this day.

Lia is 2 1/2, with lagoon-black eyes and wild curls that get even wilder in the humidity. She's afraid of roosters and cockroaches, but not much else. She's a huge fan of SpongeBob. She doesn't know how old her mom is -- and couldn't care less.

She came to us last summer from an orphanage in the Third World, a place where they collected rainwater in big earthen jars and the kids slept outdoors, under mosquito nets. Now she sleeps in a yellow bed in her own room, with a ceiling fan to stir the air conditioning and a Tweety Bird night light.

Her English is getting better and better. At least once a day she looks at me and says, "That's my mommy!"

I'm learning all the basic lessons of parenthood: that you can function on a lot less sleep than you thought possible; that it's hard to get bits of scrambled egg out of somebody's hair; that the best moment of the day is often the last one, when a pair of tiny arms wrap around your neck and won't let go.

My mother and I talk on the phone more often than we ever have -- simply because she wants to hear her granddaughter babbling in the background.

"How's Lia?" she'll ask, right away. "Oh, and how are you?"

It has been 25 years since my mom had any kids living at home. Her mothering is low-maintenance now. I think she gets a kick out of hearing about my struggles, about the 1,001 ways a toddler can drive you nuts.

"I told you," she says, chuckling.

Despite my advanced maternal age, and my inexperience, I quickly manifested a trait shared by many new mothers: As soon as I did it once, I wanted to do it again.

The urge was not about genes or family trees.

It was about all the other children I saw in Cambodia when we went to adopt Lia, the ones who stood waving as we drove away from the orphanage, the ones bathing in filthy puddles beside rice paddies, the ones waving paper fans around us in the insufferable heat, hoping for a few coins.

All of them skinny and all of them smiling, always.

So I knew early on that we weren't done, that Lia would have siblings.

Which brings me to the reason -- two reasons -- that this first Mother's Day will be bittersweet. We have two more children we can't bring home yet.

They're sisters, 5 and 8. Their mother died in childbirth, and their father, suffering from a terminal disease, brought them to the orphanage last year.

In some of the pictures e-mailed to us, they look solemn. In another one, taken at a beach outing for Cambodian New Year, they are grinning and flashing "V" peace signs. The older girl almost always has a protective arm around her little sister. I can see from the photos that they both need serious dental work.

They're trying to learn their ABCs so they'll know a little English if they ever get here. We sent photos of our house, our pets, us. We hope somebody is explaining to them what the delay is, why we don't come for them.

Late last year the INS suspended adoptions from Cambodia, stranding us and several hundred other families who were partway through the process of adopting a child. The INS action has to do with baby trafficking and the lack of "official" documents in Cambodia, and the inevitable problems when you try to apply our standards to a Third World country.

Lia knows her big sisters are coming, that they're going to share her room. Luckily, she doesn't seem to notice that they've been "coming" for seven months now. One day last week, she saw me crying over a picture of them.

"Mommy's sad?" she asked.

I nodded, feeling guilty for letting this intrude into her perfect world.

A cyber-friend on an adoption Internet group, a woman in Tennessee who adopted six children, gave me some good advice.

"Spend extra time with the daughter you already have," she posted. "The one thing I regret the most of all my adoptions is that I was always so focused on the next one that I sometimes didn't give my wonderful HERE AND NOW kids the attention and devotion they deserved."

She's right. It's time to stop feeling sheepish and start celebrating Mother's Day. Here and now.

I just have to figure out which hotel has the best brunch.

-- Jeanne Malmgren is a Times staff writer.

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