Tomorrow, at approximately 7:30am, life will change. Among the other titles and identifiers I’ve been given throughout the years, tomorrow mother (mom, mommy) will be added to it. I will have created a life, and tomorrow I will be responsible for preserving that life. Keeping tiny toes and fingers in tact – protecting hearts, and bones.
It makes me consider my mortality – and the mortality of my parents, my friends. All of my hopes and fears being transferred from my heart to another tiny life – rising and falling with each fractured breath. The worry swelling in my chest and the gratitude pooling in my eyes.
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It makes me consider my mother. How she carried me for nine months, and then for 29 years, and honestly – forever. Her heart, an ever evolving montage of our lives’ up and downs, victories and losses, happiness and tears. It makes me consider how she must’ve felt when she first held me – all at once overwhelmed and terrified and completely in love. The joy she must’ve felt at my first word. How elated she was when I took my first steps, and how equally sad. Because time goes too fast, and her baby was simply not a baby anymore.
The pride that swelled her heart when I received my first award, or was recognized for having a vivid imagination – finishing the end of a story with not a paragraph as instructed, but multiple chapters. The dance lessons I took, or the gymnastic classes she drove me to even though gymnastics was against her better judgement – safety always in mind.
And then later, the disappointments and the bad choices. The pain of the first time I yelled those three dreaded words, too self absorbed to see past my own heart and it’s beatings. The scathing poem I pinned to my door, believing that she could never understand me and making her – maybe for a second – believe it too. The worry that can only come from a missed curfew or an unexpected call in the middle of the night. Or the fear that I’d end up with the guy that was just not right for me. The guy that would never protect my heart the way that she knew it needed to be protected. Allowing me to make those mistakes, holding back so that I could find my own resolve. And later, the relief when I found, and then married, my better half. The best half. The best man.
I wonder how long she’s waited, knowing that life is cyclical. That one day I would be sitting where I am – hours from becoming a mother, a parent (an enemy, a friend). I wonder how many times she held her tongue. Or how many times she imagined me in the same scenario but on the opposite side of the fence – standing square in her shoes. And that standing there, I would be feeling thankful, lucky, and so very loved.
