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reflections on one decade of motherhood
there is one question I’ve been asking myself lately.
There is one question I have been asking myself lately:
How can I possibly sum up ten years of motherhood?
There is too much to say, but I can’t not try, so
//
When I first met Lily ten years ago, I felt little, in terms of emotion.
They whisked her away from me immediately after she was born, so in my earliest memory, Jake brings her to me, cleaned and wrapped in a white hospital blanket. I tell him to keep her, feigning complaisance.
I want to let you hold her, I said, though what I really meant was, This feels so unnatural. Who is going to tell me what to do?
A friend came to see us in the hospital a day later, and Lily was a tight burrito being held by someone other than me. Make sure you put her on your skin, my friend told me. She needs to bond with you.
A few weeks later, Jake watched me change Lily’s diaper. You know you can talk to her, right? he asked. I guess I did know, but still I didn’t really do it. The whole thing felt like I was play-acting. She was a stranger to me, and I had now become a stranger to myself. What did we have to talk about? Further, why was Jake so much better at all this than me?
When Lily turned one, we bonded over plums. Maybe it sounds like it took me a full year to bond with my first daughter, but the thing is, I think it might have taken me a full year to really bond with my first daughter. Or at least, it took me a full year to come back up to the surface for air. We shared a plum at our tiny kitchen table almost every day that summer. I’d cut one in half, and cut Lily’s share into tiny squares. I remember very little about how those days were structured—what we did, where we went—but I remember the plums for some reason. I remember sitting there thinking, Maybe I’m getting the hang of this.
This is not a story of a mother who ever fully gets the hang of it though. Maybe that’s how I’d sum up ten years of motherhood: You never fully arrive. You never fully get the hang of it. You keep at it anyway.
When Lily was two-and-a-half, she realized she could refuse to stay in her bed at bedtime. Her raspy voice is so cute, people would tell me. She screams a lot, I would say, wondering if her nightly routine was causing permanent damage to her vocal cords.
When she was four, I mentioned to her preschool teachers before school began that she might have a hard time getting into the classroom on the first day. Oh, is she the screamer from last year? one asked. Yes, I said, though this screaming was a different kind—more full of unknown hesitation than obstinance.
By the time she was five, I stopped writing with specifics about the things we were working through. It started to feel less Universal Toddler Struggle and more Individual. We are, of course, always working through something—with her and with our other kids and with ourselves.
Maybe that’s how I’d sum up ten years of motherhood: There is always something to work through.
It’s interesting that I’m largely casting Lily as the main character of these motherhood thoughts given that she was ten-months-old when Norah’s face first showed up on an ultrasound screen, three-years-old when Sawyer hit the scene, and a few days from kindergarten when Jude came along. Lily was the first but she has no memory of being the only. These ten years have been full of more than just her. Jude will turn five in a few months which means that all the kids have really been around for half of this thing. Most of them have been around for most of it. It’s not a story about Lily; it’s a story about all of us. There isn’t a main character unless you count grace and absolutely we should count grace because where would we be without that?
Once, on a family road trip, I threw what can only be described as a temper tantrum. Though the kicking and screaming happened primarily in my head, I did cover my face with a blanket and ask Jake to announce that I was not to be bothered for the foreseeable future. As I sat there fuming, I realized that I am no different than the kids—prone to overreaction and impatience and self-pity. I need all the same lessons I try to teach my kids. We’re on the same plane.
Maybe that’s how I’d sum up ten years of motherhood: Grace is the main character.
I want to tell one more story but the thing is, there are too many stories. There isn’t time enough to tell them all. There’s one where Norah swallows a mini-cupcake whole, another where a nurse momentarily misplaces Sawyer in the hospital and another where Jude is born and finally a baby is placed on my chest fresh from my body. There are graduation caps, moving trucks, and N95 masks because while our family changed in the last ten years, the world around us changed too.
When I was pregnant with Lily, my friend Laura told me becoming a mother is like learning to live with your heart on the outside of your body, and every day of the last ten years have proven her words true. Motherhood has taught me to love, certainly, but it has also taught me new ways to feel and release and observe and hope and change. It has been big and ordinary, vast and handheld.
Maybe I felt little in terms of emotion during those first moments of motherhood, but I feel all the things now. Mostly though, in this moment, I feel gratitude. We’ll take tomorrow when it comes.
Maybe that’s how I would sum up ten years of motherhood.
“Maybe that’s how I’d sum up ten years of motherhood: Grace is the main character.” wooooooow. Yes.
I just had to come back to your comments because I read this in the car the other day, it left me breathless, then I got distracted (children) and I’ve been thinking about it a lot ever since. So beautiful. Thank you for these words!