Family

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I'll start by saying that I had a really tiring day yesterday...Jeremy was on the cranky side and I was rushing around here trying my best to make my parents comfortable...and we had kind of been on the go for a couple days, nonstop...I was just, as usual these days, tired...I made a comment to my mother that went along the lines of..."boy, what I wouldn't give for a little closet to go in by myself sometimes..." My mom said something which I had never thought of before, but which is so true...she said, "Motherhood is the loneliest job...it's the most privilaged and is a blessing but it's the loneliest..."

And it is...it's so lonely sometimes being the main person who navigates Jeremy's life...I am (as I know you mothers out there are) the one to make sure he stays healthy, has clean clothes on...matching socks....brushes his teeth each night...gets enough sunshine...has his jacket on when it's too chilly...to make sure that he is getting enough of the right kinds of foods...to read labels to make sure there's no aspartame in there...to make sure I am spending more time with him than in the laundry room or with a can of Lysol...to making sure he and his dad are getting enough time together (not hard since Andrew is part child himself)...and, because he's never slept well...it's me he calls when he wakes up afraid...

But you know what? I never thought I would have a baby...the dr's told me that I most likely would have to have medical help to conceive...apart from never being able, in the first place, to believe that God had a husband somewhere for me I for sure never really believed someone would ever call me "mama"...so when I'm tired and need that quiet and I hear a little voice say one more time, "Maaaama...I want miiiiiillllk!" I try my best to remember how sweet that lilting little voice truly is...it's the voice of the child I dreamed about as I played in the playhouse that used to be my brothers' fort when they were young...it's the voice of the child I dreamed about when I worked in daycare and was mystified at the bond the little ones had with their mothers...I loved watching them...it was something so special and now it's mine...

To me motherhood means never feeling quite as empty as I did all those years I was so lonely and depressed...God saved the best for later in my life...I believe I had to know what it was like to not have before I could be truly grateful for what I have now...

To me motherhood is all wrapped up in feelings and memories locked deep inside my heart...it means, to this day, the sound of my mother's voice...it means sitting on the back porch with her and helping her shell peas in the summertime...it means the times she washed half of my dolls and put nets around their hair and clean clothes on them and packed them in a suitcase for a while so that on a rainy day a few months from then I could unpack them and have "brand new" dolls to play with...it's all the times I called "Mama" and she was there...it's the new appreciation I have for her at this point in my life...

And it means, above all that I have been given a precious task by God Himself to pass all the love I was blessed to have in my life on to Jeremy so that he can in turn one day be blessed with sweet memories of his own..."

Motherhood won't necessarily mean that I'll never be lonely again...people I love will be gone...that sweet little boy out there building a fence with his dad right now will be grown and out pursuing his own life, but I'll have the memories...because I have those I'll never be alone...

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