Muttertaaa!
Sunday was Mother's Day and I got the best gift! I am to go away for a weekend in the next three months. Leave husband and child and spend some time just for myself. I would say Lincoln is a great mind reader to know just what I wanted, but unfortunately I think it was so obvious, maybe from all the complaining and the whining and the screaming I was doing. Anyway it was a really good Mother's Day, even Veronika managed to say: "Happpysday!"
I am still very new at being the Mother in Mother's Day and as always I start wondering if I have arrived at a point, where I know what motherhood is like or who I am now that I am a mother. God, it's been almost two years and I'm still thinking about this. When I was pregnant with Veronika I was worried how motherhood would change me and when you look at that last question I'd have to say "Yes... in a way... for the time being." On a daily basis I struggle against seeing myself only as a mother and nothing else, because almost all my time is spent mothering, yet I am beginning to know for sure that I cannot live as a mother only. At the same time I savor the new relationships motherhood gives me. I enjoy all the feelings involved, I love the physical part of being a mother even though they are so overwhelming at times.
I am a walking contradiction my husband says, and he's right. I love the mother-person in me and I dream of more children, at the same time though I want nothing else than NOT be a mother for a day (or two, or seventeen!). I know it's a matter of balance and I'm working on it (Please send me a baby-sitter, thank you.), because as it turns out, one needs space and distance to take a realistic view of your own life. When I start feeling threatened by my own child I realize, now it's time to step back. It's time to take a break and contemplate my life a little, so I can see it and I can see all the aspects in their right proportions. Ah, all the mothers will say, time for contemplation? Rest? Take a break? Yeah, right! - Actually, yes. That's right. Don't give me that. That "Oh, I wish! But we all know it's NEVER going to happen!" - crap. Don't give me that because my head is full of it. I tell myself those exact things every day and surprisingly they just crush me and I become a bitter sad excuse of a person and not an enlightened martyr like the books said I would!
I love how motherhood sort of awakened in me. The child arrives and you just get going. It doesn't come naturally at first maybe, but slowly you sort of release all that natural knowledge. I thought of my own mother a lot, because obviously so many things I know because I learned them from her. It's not what she said so much as what she did and who she was. I learned how to nurture and I learned how to be comfortable and confident as a mother. And so even though she is not around most of the time, it's nice to feel my mother close in my relationship with my own daughter. It all feels familiar and it feels good to know that one day Veronika might become a mother and recognize me in her relationship with her children. This is not about pride on my part but more about a wish to stay united even in separation, and also the hope that all the "life" I've given up is not lost, but passed on.
Motherhood felt like a shock to me at first and reading my pregnancy posts I find it interesting how in a way I could feel it coming, yet was still completely oblivious. The good thing is that now I do see how I've grown as a person and feel that motherhood is an essential part of me. The challenge is still to combine the before and the after-me into a balanced One.
Posted at 02:25 PM on May 10, 2005
So you are coming to visit us, right??
Leah