Skip to main content

Becoming a Mother


I was twenty-four when I had my first child.  The doctor and my Lamaze instructor warned me that it would take several hours for a first birth.  It took all of six for my son to see light. At our Lamaze reunion, I was the hateful showoff, the one who didn’t abide by the rules. 
I was twenty-nine when I had my second child.  My office mates planned a baby shower for me on April twenty-second, but I had to call and cancel.  My baby due on June 6th came early.  It took me three hours to deliver a healthy but premature 5lb 3oz little girl. Once again I broke the rules.
I worried for nine months when I was pregnant with my third child.  According to my body’s track record, I kept cutting delivery times by halvsies.  I should have taken bets on that because number three got here in less than the anticipated one hour and a half.  I am not exaggerating; from first pain to birth, he was here in forty-five minutes. I was still fully clothed, except for underpants, delivering my baby with my Candies wedgies wedged in the stirrups.
I retired the baby works after that. I was thirty one. Raising three children well was going to be enough of a challenge.
I taught my three to grow up to be independent, with a strong sense of right and wrong.  I instilled in them a love for one another in case they didn’t have me to look out for them. I prayed for their happiness – in their personal lives, in the careers they chose, in the decisions they made. They always came first and I loved them (through example, words, affection). I did all this because one day I would have to let them go out into the world without me.  

I am their mother but I do not own them.  God entrusted them to me and together, He and I, we did a pretty good job. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Breastday to Me!

I gave myself a very special birthday present this year – I had surgery. Before you think it was to increase, decrease, or “lift” something, let me tell you it was not cosmetic (though I could probably use a few nips and tucks at my age; the infinite number of creams I buy OTC are not working their promised magic). About four or five months ago, I discovered a hard lump about the size of a large marble in my left armpit.  I had been feeling small pangs of pain in my left chest for several months, but I figured it was just my turn to dance with heart disease.  Everyone in my immediate family is diabetic and suffers from strokes or heart attacks, so I thought – here we go; my turn. I was going to tell my internist about the pangs during my next visit, so imagine my surprise when I discovered the lump. The Drama Queen in me immediately manifested herself – cancer, I thought.  I have cancer. I searched some more and found that the texture on the left side of my left breast felt diffe
9 comments
Read more

Dating Challenged

I stink at dating – always have.   I sputter.   I hyperventilate.   I fail miserably every time. I blame a pathetically underdeveloped gene that got little use before I married in my early twenties, then atrophied, gathering dust and rust, until I became single again in my fifties.   I decided to use this defect to my advantage when I needed to do some investigative reporting a few years back.   While on a newspaper writing assignment on Boomer-aged dating, I sacrificed my dignity and my vanity for the sake of the story (and I got several). Thank goodness, HoneyBunch saved me from all this when we married.  (He comes up with the best dates.) I’ve decided I will “show you mine if you show me yours.”   I will swap dating horror stories with you, but you have to promise to play along. The trick here is to tell about your worst date in 25 words or less.   You must keep it clean and you cannot name names. Our little contest will run only this week and before my next blogger posting.   Me
8 comments
Read more

Grandma’s Dining Table

Twenty five years ago my first husband and I bought a new home with four bedrooms and three baths, but my favorite part of the house was the enormous room you walked into from the front door. It had no dividing wall but the design was to use half of it as a formal living and the other half as a formal dining. From the beginning I decided to make it into one huge dining room that would catch the eye when everyone walked in through the front door of my home.   My three children were very young, but I envisioned them grown and married. We counted five at the time, but one day we would grow to eight, maybe more if we factored in grandchildren, so I bought a table that sat a family of twelve.  My husband thought it silly to look that far ahead and convinced me to buy only ten chairs. The room looked magnificent – the long, majestic table, the ten chairs, the buffet, a couple of real ficus, and a few other nice pieces of furniture – I was pleased. The table lasted longer than t
6 comments
Read more