Tomorrow marks the 5th mothers' day I will have celebrated as a mom (if you include the one when the baby was not yet here). Tonight I have been reflecting on the treasured memories I hope to always have of my little ones.
Most days I am not the mother I want to be, nor are my children all that I want them to be, but in each day there are gifts of love, tenderness, respect, appreciation, devotion, awakening and so much more. I know that I carry around reminiscences of those moments while I tend to forget the bad ones rather quickly. I hope the same is true for my girls. I hope they grow up thinking of the mommy who tucks them in at night with their favorite songs and lots of hugs and kisses, and not the lady who nags half the day and yells when she gets totally overwhelmed by their noise and chaos. I hope I am remembered for the cuddles that come after nap time rather than for the scoldings that come before.
As for my girls, this is how I see them:
I remember very little about the first days of my oldest daughter's life. Maybe it was the 53.5 hours of labor before (which began around midnight) that has erased my memory. Or maybe it was the sheer delight of this tiny treasure that was given to me that made every moment seem perfect, and very few stand out. I do remember the first moment I saw her perfect little face. I had prepared my husband (and myself) for the reality that new born babies are red, wrinkly, misshapen, and just plain ugly! I did not expect to find her pretty for at least 3 months. I was okay with that. So imagine my surprise when this tiny, ivory-skinned pearl was handed to me with the most delicate features, dark blue eyes, a sweet button nose and fuzzy brown hair. This was not a new born, this was a baby! "She's beautiful" I gasped, and she was! And then I felt badly for my husband, because she looked just like me and not at all like him!
I was determined to be a perfect mother. Room sharing sounded good, but not bed sharing! In those first weeks, I would sit up perfectly and arrange the nursing pillow whenever she was hungry and cried in the night. And then I would lay her back in the portable crib that was pushed up against the bed. Ah, how stupid I was. Oh how cunning she was! She broke me of the side-car crib within 2 weeks and slept peacefully in the crook of my arm for many months to come. This was the choice she gave me: "put me in the crib and I will sleep for 2 hours, then I will be hungry. Lay me back in the crib, and I will sleep another 2 hours, and so the night will go for us in 2 hour increments. But, if you will tuck me in with you, nestled in your arms, I will sleep for 4 hours and only wake once in the night. The choice is yours, mommy. Test it out as often as you like, for I know what I want." And so the crib was abandoned. And eventually, I learned to nurse her lying down so that I didn't have to sit upright in bed in the middle of the night.
She is a brilliant child. Her mind is always at work, and the depth of her understanding has astounded us for a very long time. Once, when she was not quite 2, we were in church together. I went grudgingly each Sunday to sit for an hour and 15 minutes for a very unworshipful service which was required of me because I am a minister's wife. I had an infant and a toddler, neither of which was particularly quiet, in a church where all good children go to the nursery. My children, however, would not go to the nursery. I had learned very quickly that I was not comfortable with the arrangements there, and so there I was trying to keep them quiet, aware I was breaking the acceptable rules and pretty much miserable all the while because my favorite part of the service was singing the hymns. And you just try singing hymns with a baby in the sling and a busy toddler climbing all over the pews. One day, my toddler picked up the Bible at the end of the service. Trying to nurture a faith in her (even if the faith in me was walking through the valley of the shadow of death), I said "that's the Bible." and asked her "Do you know what it says?" Immediately, she threw up her arms and said "Alleluia!" I was stunned. I had never realized you could summarize the Bible with one word, and yet my not-quite-2-year-old daughter had done just that.
Pew climbing apparently was just the beginning. This small 4 and a half year old loves to climb still. And her favorite thing? The climbing wall at the gym. No, it's not some pygmy sized rock wall set up with extra large grips for kids to start out with, it's the real, grown-up sized wall. She has never left it willingly, or because she couldn't make the next reach, it is always us, pulling her off because it is time to go!
My second baby was my unexpected gift. Having a 6 month old baby, I wasn't feeling a strong desire to bring new life into the world, however, apparently it was a possibility that I should have considered a little more carefully. Thankfully, I didn't. On Father's day I went into the bathroom bright and early in the morning and walked out with a positive pregnancy test to congratulate my still-in-seminary husband on being doubly blessed on this, his second father's day.
I do remember very distinctly the first day of my 2nd daughter's life. I remember trying to remember it because I could not recall the earliest days of her sister. I was alone this time with her for most of our hospital stay, because now there was another person who needed parenting too. And as we lay there in bed together (why even bother with that silly bassinet; I had already been broken of such notions), I remember holding her on my chest, so small and warm, and thinking how exceedingly cuddly she was. Was her sister this cuddly? Ever? It was hard to know because her sister was now a toddler too busy discovering the world to be cuddled for long. But as I look back, I tend to think that no, cuddliness is a quality that belongs particularly to my 2nd baby. She remained ever so much more cuddly than her sister even as she entered and exited her toddler years. And to this day, she sits much more contentedly in my arms than her big sister ever did. That is one of the sweetest things about her: this unexpected gift that brought so many hugs into my life.
My 2nd daughter is quite a character, and very self assured. She was 2 before she ever smiled for a camera, and until age 3, camera smiles were on her terms and quite rare. But her pouts are more adorable than anything you could imagine. We called her "Baby" from the day she was born, and to this day I call her that more than anything else. She objected for a while, but it happens so often, I suppose she gave up the protest. She is so smart it scares me. She was just barely 3 this spring when she began spelling and reading short words. Not that we were trying to teach her, she just learned along with the older children at her preschool.
She has this charming habit, it began with her very first sentence: "Mommy, I love you." And she says it very often, at least once a day. But don't get me wrong, she is no easy child. She will not eat if she doesn't like it. You cannot make her put on something she doesn't want to wear. She will not do anything upon command, and never has, and most of all, you can't pretend she is someone other than herself, because she will instantly correct you. Oh, and by the way, she told me today as she was getting ready for bed that she is "very cute"; she's right.
This task of mothering is ever so much harder than I imagined it would be. Every day I am haunted by doubts that I am doing the right thing. How will they grow up to be more than I have ever been? How will they find their way in a world that seems more daunting each day? And will they ever learn to say "please" and "thank you" at all the right times and not to pick their noses in public? Moreover, how do I teach them manners, self-control and respect without breaking their amazing spirits and strong self-assurance? I want them to grow into the women I never could be: beautiful, strong, loving and self-confident. But how do I give them things I have never had?
If I had known how hard this task would be, I doubt I would have ever ventured into mothering. But from the moment those babies were set in my arms, I knew I would never be complete without them. I knew that everything around me would cease to have meaning should one of them be lost. And so it is. I must do what I cannot do because if I don't, I cannot be. It is the bittersweet truth of life as a mother.
My life has changed so radically in these past 5 years. Everything is harder, takes longer, more planning. And yet, if I could go back...that makes no sense, I could never go back to a life without the preciousness that 2 girls bring each and every day. I only hope I am giving them something in return for their gift to me.
