On Being Mommy

Twelve years ago, I became a parent.  First, let me say that it is very hard for me to believe that The Boy is actually 12 years old.  I still picture him as the angelic little boy who could run under the edge of our kitchen island without ducking.  Needless to say, he cannot do that now.

I remember sitting in my hospital room the day after The Boy was born.  We were supposed to go home the next day, and I remember the feeling of blind panic that seized me at that prospect.  I remember thinking that this little person was absolutely perfect.  He was beautiful, angelic, and peaceful.   In my mind, all I was going to do from that moment on was mess him up.  The thought terrified me, and as I sat in that room, I began to weep.  Not the graceful tears streaming down your face kind of weeping.  No.  This was the savage, guttural wailing kind of weeping.  Weeping like your heart has broken.  I felt like I had failed him before we even got started.

Luckily, the maternity ward of UNC Hospital was staffed by a kind-hearted nurse named Claudia.  I remember Claudia sitting with me while I cried my eyes out.  Once I had gotten it all out of my system, she showed me how to do the things that I was panicking about: how to get The Boy to nurse, talking me through how to bathe him, how to swaddle him and how to get those tricky onesies on him.  (Somehow, I thought these skills would be instinctive.  They were not.)  She also said something to me that I didn't understand at the time.  She told me in  response to my lamenting fear of ruining him: You are not going to ruin him.  In fact, he's going to change you.  

And boy has he ever.  

I spent the first 11 years of The Boy's life trying to get him to conform to my ideas of how things should be.  It is only in the last few months that I realized the truth in what Claudia told me all those years ago.  I'm not the one that's shaping these two.  They are shaping me - when I let them.  It is not an easy thing to do.  Being a parent means you have to check your ego at the door and accept life as it comes.  It requires acknowledging that I don't know everything.  (Mother, in fact, may NOT know best.)

Being Mommy to The Boy (and later to his sister) has changed me.  It has taught me that there is no such thing as having anything completely under control.  It has given me the opportunity to experience the world in new and unusual ways.  It has shown me what it is to love unconditionally.  And it has taught me how crucially important it is to appreciate, love, and accept people as they are.  Including myself.

Kahlil Gibran said it much more eloquently that I could.

On Children

 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, 

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, 

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, 

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children

as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, 

and He bends you with His might 

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, 

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

And Sweet Honey in the Rock interpreted it even better than that:

I've been thinking a lot about what this means - especially in context of all the other work I've been doing.  I am the bow from which my two little arrows are being sent forth into the world.  I have to be flexible enough to give them the trajectory they need, but strong enough not to break when the string is drawn back.  It's a fine line to maintain, and many days, I don't do it so well.  But every day is a new chance to be what they need me to be, so they can be who they will become.

The Girl and The Boy
If this is not a reason to be the best I can be,
I don't know what is.