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| "R" in her first year |
soooo this is my premiere post, something I have been meaning to do for the better part of a month now, but we all know how the days can get away from us. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say or how to go about it, after all, this is your first introduction to me and I wanted it to be a good one. After much consideration I have decided to just jump in, “let the moment be”, which has been my moto for the past couple of weeks. Here it goes…
“R” had her school orientation today, for the past year I have been thinking about her heading off to school with a very nonchalant attitude, but as the moment gets closer and closer I feel differently. She was my introduction to motherhood, she shaped me and changed me in ways that before her, I could never imagine. Once upon a time I wrote this…
“It is amazing, the mental clarity that arises from a 3am panic attack, in a bedtime sandwich that of which I am the outer layer and also includes my husband and 13 month old daughter who takes up way more space in the bed then a child of her proportion should require. Should I lye completely still, for fear of waking someone, or should I get up and get a glass of water. I weigh my options and decide to stay put, no surprise there, as the self sacrificing part of my personality now wins every time. It is one of the many parts of my personality that have altered since the arrival of this wonderful, beautiful, charming little girl, who entered my world and changed it. Motherhood hit me like a ton of bricks, and I will never forget the feeling. I was taking a shower, unassuming, when suddenly between the soap and the shaving cream it hit me, I am a Mother. She entered our lives only days before, and although the love was instant, this new feeling was not. The sudden reality of two hour nursing sessions, and late night diaper changes had allowed me to forgo this feeling for a few days, but now in this few stolen moments of my own, it has found me. Worry has arrived and she is unrelenting.
Suddenly, I understood why at fifteen, my mother had denied my request to attend numerous parties that everyone would be attending. I felt the anguish she must have felt upon realizing that I had been riding in cars with boys. How did she not go completely and totally insane; or did she? This worry is inexplicable to expecting, yet in reality very unexpecting, parents. Before your child is born everyone tries to explain the change that will take place, when your new screaming bundle of joy arrives. You nod, agreeingly, as you already know all of this; of course you will love and worry about your child. You have no idea. So as the trickle of the shower is replaced by my pouring tears, tears of joy, excitement, and fear of this new challenge, I realize what everyone tried to tell me, I have changed.”
I remember that woman, that time, so new to the journey, but so happy to be on it. Now with a blossoming family, I am seasoned in some respects, an “old pro”, but I will always feel the enormity of that moment…so glad that I “let the moment be”, because I really feel that it shaped what was to come.
So today was “R”’s moment, and she was glowing as I knew she would be, full of excitement and anticipation for her new journey…and there was mama reluctantly letting her be…
