Mother's Day Again

My Mother's Day was a sandwich. It began and ended with turmoil, with the sweet spots in between. I woke up this morning and my 9 year old laid down next to me. "Happy Mother's Day! Can you take me to the store to buy fabric today?" She has been working on some projects lately and has been asking for some fabric and buttons. She is very talented. I taught her to thread a needle and mend when she was 6 years old. She would make little pillows for her Barbies and mend holes in her socks. She raided my linen closet this week and hand sewed a bag. I am very impressed with her abilities. Hancocks always has sales on fabric so I told her I would give her $5 to spend. She freaked out on me and insisted that I give her $20 and when I said "no way", she pouted and told me I was horrible and retreated to her bed room. Uggh. 

She did come around eventually and the kids gave me some gifts. A new wallet, some cards and letters. My 7 year old gave me a keychain that says "MELISSA" on it that she got out of the treasure box. She thought I'd like it because it was in the shape of a flip flip. haha. I thanked them and kissed them both. We played volley ball, I had brunch with my mother and family, then we lounged for the afternoon. It was time for bed and of course the girls started fighting and my oldest got hurt and they both were screaming and crying and my husband yelled. Lord in heaven. I was stressed. I laid with them both for a few minutes and they both cried and told me about how much they disliked their sister and how life is hard. I was over it.

I have been a mom for a little while now. I have survived the baby stage, the toddler stage, the kid stage, I'm living in the "pre-teen" stage right now - which I think may kill me. It's hard to believe how much time has passed. In just 2 months, my daughter will be 10. A whole decade has come and gone. It seems like a moment and a life time ago all at the same time. I wasn't sure that I had the capability to be a good mother. I was very concerned and nervous about it. She was born and they handed her to me and she seemed almost foreign but she belonged to me.

We were poor then, and our insurance didn't pay for a private room and I shared a room with another mother who delivered the same day as me. There was a curtain between us. The second night in the hospital, we were alone. Just my daughter and I. My roommate sent her baby to the nursery for the night so she could get some rest. She didn't get any rest, because I wasn't letting my baby leave my side. It was the middle of the night and she began to fuss and I couldn't get her to nurse. She would try so hard but was screaming and getting so frustrated and upset. Less than 48 hours into this whole mom thing and I was failing horribly. I laid her on my chest and I stroked her head and I talked her her. "Shhhh. It's okay. We can do this. I love you." I said it over and over again. In a whisper, to calm her but to mostly reassure myself. Finally I got her to settle in. I breathed a sigh of relief. She was finally quiet and calm and eating. I heard a voice behind the curtain then. My room mate. She was up listening to my baby crying for an hour. Bless her heart. She said to me, "I can tell by the way you talk to your baby, that you are going to be a really good mom." How did she, a poor, young, first time mom -like me know exactly what I needed to hear in that moment? Looking back, I think that was God speaking through her. I am thankful for that. Her kind words made me realize that maybe I wasn't a horrible failure after all.

I did finally get a hang of the whole being a mom thing. We were inseparable and by the time my second daughter was born I felt like I could do this. My girls are the most beautiful creatures I have ever laid eyes on. I love these girls with an intensity that is indescribable. They are the sun in my sky and the stars that shine through the darkness. They are the air that I breathe. I long to be close to them. To hold them next to me and inhale their being. I love them so much, that it's almost painful as each year they take a step further away from me. I know that for them to thrive, I have to let them but it is so hard sometimes. The years have melted away so quickly that I feel like I can barely hold on. I know that their childhood is fleeting and I feel it with an intensity now that I have not in the years past. I wish I could freeze time and stay in this moment forever sometimes.

I don't know if I am a good mother. I think it's too early to tell. But I do know that I do the best that I can. That I love them and I provide for them and try to figure things out along the way. Experience has taught me that nothing is as simple as we think it should be and motherhood is a perfect example of that. When I was pregnant for the first time I thought about all the things that I wanted my children to learn and to know and to remember and I narrowed it down to 3 things. Since my girls were little we have told them over and over again the 3 most important things are: "You are smart. You are beautiful. Mom and dad love you NO MATTER WHAT." We have said this over and over again to them and made them say it back to us since they were old enough to talk. Whenever they are having a bad day (or I am) I ask them to tell me what the 3 most important things are and they recite it back to me. I think if they grow up to really believe that they are smart, beautiful, capable and LOVED that I have done my job as a mother. I hope that one day, they are as fortunate as I have been to have children of their own so that they can know the joy that they have brought to me.