This year I will celebrate my first Mother’s Day as a mom. My son is 8 months old, which means he has been out here, breathing on his own in this big, scary world almost as long as he was growing snug, warm, and safe inside of my 43-year-old body.
After his birth (including 80 hours of labor and a vacuum-assisted delivery), it was very hard to get used to the fact of this little bundle of soft, warm strangely familiar flesh as a separate being. When he was a newborn, it was nearly physically painful for me to let him out of my sight, even if he was only in the next room being rocked and cuddled by his dad.
Now, of course, I crave some alone time, but I still fixate on my growing infant almost as if he were a new appendage. This fixation has made my world very small in some ways: I literally have to train my increasingly near-sighted vision to focus on trimming tiny fingernails and toenails. I spend lots and lots of time now on the floor, creaking joints and all, eye-to-eye with my 20-pound wonder. And I often spend the nights in bed with a tiny hand resting on my chest or arm, seemingly attached. Motherhood is inward-turning, for sure. You could even call it insular. And it’s not as if I wasn’t warned: Before I became pregnant with my son, a well-meaning friend shared her own experience of becoming a parent later in life, saying, “It’s great to be a mother, but nobody can help glue you to the world when you are removed to the Island of Child.”
But motherhood has also turned me outward, making me unable to ignore what’s going on globally. Even with my current inability to keep up with my past levels of regular news media consumption, it is constantly obvious to me now that there is danger and unrest and heartbreak happening everywhere. Coal mine disasters, earthquakes, tsunamis, and air crashes. Syria, Libya, Lebanon, and Pakistan. Defensive maneuvers, offensive attacks, and long-sought-after restitution. And this sad little list doesn’t even take into account the suffering brought by AIDs, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and malaria.
When Erling was only a few weeks old, I puffed up my chest and told my mother in law, a Marine Corps officer, that my child would never fight in a war. I can’t remember exactly how she responded, this mother of two sons of her own, a woman soldier who has seen time in Fallujah. I like to think she assured me that, “with any luck” my son, her first grandson, would certainly not ever be placed so blatantly in harm’s way. But we all know, there are no guarantees of safety in this combative, germ-filled, madly invasive and interactive world; there never have been, really. Motherhood, however, has made me so aware of the constant dangers to all of us that it hurts – it hurts to know that my baby will not always be safe in his mama’s arms.
All mothers know this bittersweet realization – we give life, but with that gift come the nonnegotiable add-ons of pain, suffering, and eventually, death. Which is exactly why mothers love their children so ridiculously much while we can. The shadow over our shoulders can only be chased away by hours of silly baby-talk, endless goofy antics that make our little ones giggle and coo, and at least 8 million kisses planted on those sweet cheeks every single day.
Author Elizabeth Stone wrote, “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” Anyone who willingly chooses to do that is not only brave but also eternally optimistic – and that is the kind of mother I sincerely hope to become, despite the headlines and other reminders of our ongoing human folly.