“Pickul Clan”
“I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
Someone posted the above quote by Kurt Vonnegut on Facebook recently and it truly spoke to me. I hadn’t encountered it before; although Kurt Vonnegut was one of my favorite authors in high school, I’ve read very little of him since. I loved him then because he made me laugh and think and view the world in a new, demented way, and this is likely at least partially why I am the way I am now: cynical but loving and tending to view the world in an odd, demented way.
Have you ever said to yourself, “I am happy now; this is what happiness is?” I’ve always thought it was a little odd that I do. I’ve long thought it was my writing tendency that so often made me feel as though I were standing apart from the scene in which I found myself, a somewhat impartial observer. Reading that quote made me realize that, even if that’s a strange thing to do, I’m not entirely alone. Kurt Vonnegut, at least, knew about that.
Nearly seven and a half years ago I became a mother, at the age of 42. Even at that ripe old age, I had illusions of semi-changing instantly, of becoming a brand-new person, wiser, more confident, instantly bestowed with the instinct to know how to handle any situation. That did not happen; on the morning of the day they sent us home from the hospital, I said to my husband, “What can I do to get them to keep me here for another day?”
I looked at my son, this fragile little thing, wriggling under the hospital blanket in the hospital bassinet, and thought, I don’t know how to take care of that baby! They can’t possibly send him home with me! I wondered how they couldn’t see that I was incapable of being trusted with this delicate life.
I managed, and I’m somehow managing since, despite being utterly unqualified and making many, many mistakes. But one thing that has never been missing from our lives is love.
And, although there are moments when I’m busy, distracted, selfish, tired, or sick, clueless as to my child’s needs and entirely ignorant of the Right Thing to Do, there are many other moments when he and I laugh or hold each other or read a book together and I think, “I am happy now. I am so very happy in this moment. This is what it’s about.”
So I urge you, too, to take a moment now and then to look at your child(ren) and feel the love in your heart and just let that moment fill you with joy and gratitude and happiness to be alive. Because that’s what it’s about.
Happy Mother’s Day.