May 2007
What exactly does it mean to be a mother? As young girls we are told you will grow up someday and become one, but it is a loaded statement to assume every women becomes a mother. Quite to the contrary I think many women find themselves looking down at their new little bundles and wondering helplessly with worry as to what on earth they now have to tend to! It becomes even more daunting as your quickly slip into no sleep modes and somehow find mascara under your seat!
Yes, well…becoming a mother is a lot of rearranging all the things you used to worry about. It’s figuring out that really those Prada mules are cute…but there’s that tuition for private education to pay! Suddenly I found myself “thirty something” and excited about watching a TV program (that I TIVO’ed!!!) without interruptions! Astonishment! I realized that I have become like my mother! I make no bones about it, I wipe snotty noses, I kiss booboos too; and so now as we celebrate the most dreaded day for me as a child I now have made it my most cherished as I savor and relish the details of a role I have grown completely accustomed to.
The opportunity to be a mother is a gift. The remarkable capacity to love someone so much is quite like a magic spell. The ability to change love to meet the needs of each child exemplifies the tasks of being a mother. The role, like no other, transforms you into a sacred space within the universe! I love being a mother, it is the simplest role I have ever chosen. It was hard to be a daughter, it was hard to be a friend, and it was hard to become a wife…and yes, a lover. Difficult to give over oneself to such …well vulnerability.
However, as I danced into the role of a mother I just knew it was a perfect place, a special place. The act of mothering begets me. I feel the most at home in my own skin by the characteristics of it and yet I do at times feel dismayed as well. I need for my children to like me as adults. I love them and now understand the ways of my father and others around me.
This is a difficult job. What other can you imagine that carries so much responsibility to the universe at large? Mothers are the source of life and the causes of many suffering. Mothers are full to the very brim with love when they are mothers. I was given my fairest daughter as my first born. I remember looking at her and thinking OH MY GOD what have we done? I have no one to ask questions to…they aren’t here. Daddy proved to be of little help in the ways of mothering. Men are wonderful in their own ways!
So I did what most new mothers do, I bought scores of books about the subject and studied through each stage hoping to stay at least two steps ahead of her development. Unfortunately, none of this prepared me for her allergies to the world around her. Amidst all of that parenting guides….not a word about what to do when your child turns blue and can’t breathe! Tossing those parental rules away and letting the moments guide me have proved to be steadfast and surer course in the simple act of mothering!
My daughter now has aged past the scary stuff. She carries in her the eyes of her father and at her wildest and most tempestuous times I see glimpses of me. She was planned, every details not overlooked in the room set in place so perfectly before she even knew how to be. I had plans (how funny that one can plan to be a mother!) and have watched her and cared for her soul and fought to protect her innocence. She is a beautiful creature of God and she will one day acknowledge these gifts of being female I have given. After following all of someone else’s “rules” wasting days of study and missing some of the precious events of change on anticipation and anxiety, I ran reckless and free with my second born.
He is a different child, needing different mothering. He arrived and was rushed away from me. He slept in my closet for his first year. I needed him to be close and I needed him to protect me. I realize now why. He was to be my last. I would never get to get this right again… any falsehoods of parenting I had somehow succumbed to with my first had to be rectified with my last or I would send myself into a crisis! I was a better mother only because I knew exactly what I was doing and so when the tantrums visited I met them with a sea of thinking chairs and an army of patience. When the night tremors and five times to get settled for the night came I was prepared to hold and watch my caress automatically send him back into his dreams.
In astonishment I discovered I had received my magic hands and eyes! I found a special connection to a greater body. I now possess what all children know as secret powers because I have fully become the role of mother.
So, as we celebrate this most fabulous day of the year , allow the entire day to rediscover you’re children. Spend this day like most of us spend all others, except do it purposefully. Examine their tiny hands and think about what great things they will do with them. Examine their tiny hearts and find ways to as- sure them they are pure and good. Examine their beautiful eyes and peer deep into them, for they are the windows to their soul. At the end of this day write each of them a letter. Tuck it away for them to find later adding more mystery to this whole role of Mother. Once every little head is sleeping soundly and you’ve held their hands and tended to their needs; you’ll find yourself… well…..mothering!
Take care of You,
