Mommie Dearest

It’s a charged word right? Mom. We all have some sort of image that pops into our head when we hear the word ‘Mom’. For some of us (the lucky ones) it’s an image of someone who has loved us, supported us, was there. For others, the image is not at all a positive one but instead conjures up negative memories of abandonment, rejection or even abuse. But we all have a reaction – an instant, unstoppable, personal response to the word ‘Mom’ (or, of course, it’s more formal root ‘Mother’).

I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently because, obviously, I’m now (well) on my way to becoming a mother myself. I was thinking about it again yesterday – when my own mom left to go back to Dallas after a quick visit to our house.

My thoughts center around the idea of what a mother is, what a mother should be and what I hope to be to my own children (specifically, the one in my belly currently making it difficult for me to sleep at night). And this weekend, when my own best example was pulling away, it came to me in probably the clearest (and yet also the most vague) terms I could use to express it.

I want to be the kind of mother that, when my own babies are almost 30 and leading their own grown-up attempts at life, they look forward to my visits like that deep, ragged breath after a good cry or the first, cool spring rain – that refreshing, start-over, feel-good-and-centered feeling that I get when I’ve been blessed with quality time with my own mom. I want my kids to know that no matter how old they get, there’s always going to be that sense of home with me – that sense of no-matter-what, always-be-there, man-I-love-you sense of belonging.

I would like to imagine that most mothers start out with similar hopes so the difficulty is figuring out how to get there. How do you go about the day-to-day things for the next 20 years so that the rest of their lives they know that feeling of warmth and comfort is there for them in you? If it were easy, everyone would do it, so there’s got to be something in there that I have to ferret out – and I’m quite sure, like most things, it’s different for each person so I have to figure out what it is for me.

No pressure, right?

I know already that one thing is true and that I won’t be able to hide it from this tiny person when they get here – and that is that I love them. In an over-the-top, giggle-in-my-cereal, giddy-schoolgirl type of way, like the best all-in-your-head love affair you ever had with the heartbreak kid across homeroom. I don’t know anything about them – who they’ll be, what they’ll look like or if they’ll someday break my heart. But I know none of that will matter. I will love them anyway.

One of the things that I learned from the sad loss of Daly-pup was that unconditional love can give you joy and hope and yet also heartache and pain – each made all the more crushing by the loss of that which you loved so much – but also that I wouldn’t trade a single day, a single moment with him to avoid what came later. I know that this baby will be all of that and more – love like I’ve never known, joy like I’ve never felt, and with that, the potential for the deepest pain imaginable. And already I wouldn’t trade a single second, a single tear-to-come. From the moment we found out I was pregnant – the mere fact that this baby is here, that is enough.

You always hear all of this about becoming a parent and I guess I always just assumed it or ignored it or glossed over it – but the reality is actually almost a little frightening. Like the first time Colin and I got in a real, lay-it-bare argument after our wedding and I had this scary ‘we HAVE to work this out’ realization and for a split second I felt trapped. I love this baby in a head-over-heels, completely-abandoned way and that love feels almost a little bit like tossing myself over a ledge and hoping there's a soft landing waiting.

In the end, what I hope for more than anything, is to be the best mom I can be. I know there will be rough patches, arguments and moments where I let this baby down (or vice versa). But I hope, thirty years from now, all that really matters to them is that sense of relief, of coming home, that they get when we're together. If I can create that for them, I will consider myself successful.