My heart is full today - so full that my thoughts are just a mass of wires trying to connect so that I may express these oh-so- deep feelings. It started the moment I woke up. Now usually mornings are not my forte. I'm a night owl. It takes me a long time to surface - but today I was wide awake instantly. Tom was leaving very early to go back to University and I lay there fretting. Did he have everything, was he alright? Oh,the mother-angst I just so, so hate about being a mother. You see I'm a champion worrier at the best of times but oh the stress of child independence in some occasions are a killer.
It was a relief when Anth finally drove him to the station. I went back to bed and thought about my mothering journey. Yesterday was Grandma's funeral. She was a wife, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. What roles to have been granted in life and she played them well. So well.
Am I the mother I thought I would be? In some ways no. Do I think I am a good mother? My first thoughts are negative, but that maybe because I hold the position of being a good mother so high. Maybe unrealistic or maybe just not me. I feel I'm sometimes too selfish but that could be that my children are teenagers and don't require so much of my time. Do I show them enough love? Am I too critical, too hard to please? Do I listen enough to their hopes and fears? God I hope so.
It is a fine balance during these teenage years.
I then picked up my trusty iphone to do some blog surfing. I happened by chance, somehow, going from blog to blog like you do, to stumble upon this. So perfect.
WHAT I WOULD TELL HER: (If I knew what to say.)
You are a miracle.
And I have to love you this fiercely: So that you can feel it even after you leave for school, or even while you are asleep, or even after your childhood becomes a memory.
You’ll forget all this when you grow up. But it’s okay.
Being a mother means having your heart broken.
And it means loving and losing and falling apart and coming back together.
And it’s the best there is. And also, sometimes, the worst.
Sometimes you won’t have anyone to talk to.
Sometimes you’ll wonder if you’ve forgotten who you are.
But you must remember this: What you’re doing matters.
And you have to be brave with your life so that others can be brave with theirs.
The truth is, being a woman is a gift. Tenderness is a gift. Intimacy is a gift. And nurturing the good in this world is a nothing short of a privilege.
That’s why I have to love you this way. So I can give what I have to you. So that you can carry it in your body and pass it on.
I have watched you sleep. I’ve kissed you a million times. And I know something that you don’t, yet:
You are writing the story of your only life every single minute of every day.
And my greatest hope for you, sweet child, is that I can teach you how to write a good one.
*************************************
I then went on to discover this book 'Because I love Her' by Andrea Richesin and have ordered it as a little get-better-soon treat for myself, though I think it won't help my over-emotional state right now! But hey, that is one thing my children can count on...their mother reading heart-rending non-fiction books that have her quietly sobbing into a vintage hankie!
I suppose it's all about being the best mother one can be in the circumstances you find yourself in. To build up their confidence so that they may fly strong and high and that they won't hopefully remember that I never did baking with them and dragged them around charity shops with the tag of 'treasure hunting'..
My wish is that when it is my funeral and if I have been privileged enough to have the same roles as Grandma; that my children and my children's children will know quite simply, whatever my failings, how deeply they had been loved.
