I have been away from my blog for a long, long time ...
When it had been almost a month since I had posted last, I had two friends let me know that I had better get on it quick. Oops. I didn't get on it very quick, did I? Next month it will have been a year. A year ... really? Wow. Lots and lots and lots more has happened for me during the course of this last year, I will say that. Big changes for this old gal and her fan-damily. But all of those changes will have to wait to be posted about. Because this post, since it is coming up on Mother's Day, and being a mother is my favorite thing ever ... is about that.
This picture was taken of me right before I became a mother for the first time. And it's so weird that after all these years (almost 30 now), I can still remember it so well.
I labored for a really long time. It was about 18 hours when the nurse (who needed a swift kick for not knowing what she was really doing) told me to start pushing. I remember thinking, But I don't feel like pushing. In Lamaze class they said you would feel like pushing. I have no urge to push whatsoever. But she said I needed to and so for the next two hours, that's what I did. (I'll spare you the description of what I looked like in that nether region after having pushed for two hours.) It was awful. Nothing was happening, but that nurse was telling me to keep pushing.
When my baby was finally ready to emerge, she came out all covered in an orange tinted slime (reminded me of the tub scene in Poltergeist) and she was a shiny purplish color. She was a fat, bald, beautiful girl who didn't even cry but tried hard to open her eyes and look at me because she heard my voice and I knew that she knew me. (When my own mother saw the pictures of McCall fresh out of the womb she asked, "Were you scared to death when you saw her?" I guess being a purple hue isn't normal - but, what did I know? I thought she was amazing, and absolutely heavenly.)
My world changed in that instant and I am forever grateful.
What inspired me to write today was reading CJane's post, on Mothering. I feel what she feels.
In a nut shell, she was sharing about how and why she doesn't really feel that being a mother is a sacrifice. She said it's 99% self- care and only 1% sacrifice.
... that 1% of pure sacrifice. That's occupied by the hours I've spent pushing my children on swings. I get nothing out of pushing my children on swings. It doesn't tone my arms and it's really boring. I mean, even if my children are blissfully pointing their toes to the sky, I feel nothing except, "Ten more pushes and then I'm going in for a Coke with lemon, okayyyyyyyyyyy?"
(Except you know in my case, it would be a diet coke.)
I don't look at motherhood as a sacrifice. And while it has been a really long time since my children were little and demanded the kind of physical exertion of their mother each day, my children still require much of my time and energy and attention, and I love it.
Like last night when McCall called me on her way home to talk about her frustration with her renters, and this morning when I got a text message from Sophie who needed her immunization records sent to a doctor in New York, and when Elliott called me earlier today to say his throat was killing him and could I please make a doctor's appointment for him.
Did I mind any of that? Absolutely on the contrary. It gives me great joy and satisfaction to fill the needs of my children ... always have and, hopefully anyway, always will.
happiest mother's day to you!
