Just So My Children Know What Being Their Mother Has Done For Me

To all mothers, and especially for my sons, the people to whom I am eternally grateful.

Before I had children, what I knew about being a mother could be summarized here: Most remarkable event in life. Period. What I didn’t know about being a mother cannot be wrapped up in one neat sentence or perfunctory paragraph. Instead, it must be told like it feels, like the weaving together of so many beautiful and so many rare threads, forming somehow, inexplicably, a piece of comfort both so strong and so soft it takes my breath away. Motherhood is one thing I knew it would be. It is a million times a million things I never imagined. It is joy and love and anguish and pride and hope and forgiveness and throaty laughs and bear hugs. It is tiny cool fingers on your arm and sticky peanut butter cheeks against your leg and little heart shaped mouths puckering up to kiss you goodnight. It is crying on a regular basis, primarily because you cannot believe God blessed you enough to send these tiny little people for you to take care of. Mostly it is marveling when you rock a baby or bathe a toddler that God formed this perfect child and knew his name since the beginning. That thought really rocks my world. And how about this one? That He knows every hair on their head. That HIS love for them is even stronger than your love for them. Now, that is some love! Overall, the whole mothering thing is mind-blowing and the realization that no matter what, there is still a whole lot of beauty in the world. Most of it I argue is sitting in your lap, or riding in the backseat of your car, or sleeping with sweet baby snores right down the hall.


After having both of my children, I wandered around in a daze thinking about the ties that bind me to every other mother that ever was and ever will be. I think the realizations I came to have were one of the most rewarding parts of parenting. I became a card-holding member of The Club of Motherhood. Dues paid in full. What makes you a member? Ownership of the emotions and the primal feelings of love and protection that are stronger than any other love between two people on this planet. What becoming a mother did for me was open my mind to insights I had never thought of before. At the heart of it is this: Every time a baby is born the amazing thing it that it is like the VERY first time a mother loved a child. No matter how many times it happens on this Earth or to you, it just never gets old or becomes routine. What a tremendous gift from God!

When my children were born and were busy becoming bonafide “people”, I was a person busy becoming a bonafide mother. And it wasn’t just happening to me. It was happening all over this big planet. I could not get it out of my mind! I would be hit in the gut with this realization over and over. In every city and every little out of the way town with one stop light someone was feeling the same overwhelming love as me. In every country, in every culture. In castles and huts and houses very much like mine, women were not just women anymore, they were something greater and more encompassing. It was happening pretty much every moment. Every time a child is born, so is a mother as the old adage goes. And it really got to me. This fact became almost a mantra as I fed my babies, or changed them, or stared at them for hours, getting a crick in my neck. I realized this: Right now , yes, this instant, someone is reaching down and feeling that hot slippery baby placed on their stomach and splayed across their skin with tight little fists like tiny curled starfish. Again, right now! Again, right now! Magnificent! Whether being birthed in a home or a hospital or any other single place women have the courage and the knowledge to bear down and bring forth a breathing, living human being, it is happening all the time. Someone who never has is putting a babe to the breast. Someone is hearing the first cry, the most beautiful and out-of-this-world noise known to womankind. It is happening to rich people and poor people and people of all colors, to people in positions of freedom and people in positions of powerlessness, to people who live in jungles or in high rises. To people who speak French or Cantonese. To Eskimos. To me. It was the one fact, the one solitary and gorgeous fact of life, that at every moment a mommy was being born and her love was uniting us all. It put in me a deep and bone-warming comfort that the world would be all right. That my children would grow to see it. That any bad could be overcome because mothers would find a way to make it right. At any given time, I imagine it is pretty safe to say that a woman is becoming a mommy. And because of this, at every moment in time, the world is becoming a little brighter and a little better. At every moment a woman is learning her heart will spend the rest of her life walking around outside of her body. This is what my children have done for me. They have opened my mind to these ideas, these securities about what unites us all. This crazy world isn’t such a big scary place after all. I learned that from my children.


Every morning while rocking my tiny fragile newborn babies with their sweet smelling heads and paper thin fingernails, I prayed for other mommies about to begin the most worthwhile journey of their lives. With my jaw and heart hanging wide open, I stared star-struck at these specimens of God’s love in my arms, willing myself to believe the unimaginable that had become truth– I was a mother. I would be a mother until my last breath and I knew that I would love and fight for them with every ounce of my being until I left this life. Never had such a purpose consumed me. It made me want to be a better person. To seek out pain and heal it. To seek out trouble and mend it. To do more, be more. To leave a legacy in my children and for my children. It took my heart and shaped it. Molded it into something it had been working hard on becoming all along, but something it never knew exactly how to be. Until now.


Thank you Brendan and James for showing me who I am and what all I can be. You have brought me full circle and clothed me in the fine robes of motherhood. God gave us to each other and I lift His name in praise over and over for the sheer gift of giving birth to you and helping to raise you. Lord, through these children, You have showered on me rays of hope and happiness. You have filled my cup when it was empty. You have lifted me up when I was drowning. These children, through Your Grace, have done each and every thing one soul can do for another. And boys, you have done it in simply being. This Mother’s Day and each day, you are my very best present, my biggest surprise. My biggest blessing was becoming your mother and taking my place in the membership spanning all times and all places – the membership of Motherhood. I love you boys, for who you are and for who I am when I am with you.
Love,
Momma