Everything
On Motherhood: It’s you and it’s me and it’s all the things we don’t say and all the things we do
Last Mother’s Day I was still pregnant with you. I remember crying when your dad gave me a card. I was sitting in the rocking chair outside and the warmth of the sun had made my cheeks flush with color. The crying made it worse. I was splotchy and red-faced and sticky with tears. I had three months until you arrived and I remember how unprepared I felt. How lost I was. How I felt stuck between two identities.
A mother, but not quite.
I remember writing that I was a mother without any of the joys. How I didn’t wake up to the sound of little feet on the old wood floors or tiny hands around my neck or the warm weight of a small body tucked in next to me.
But today is different.
Today I am a mother in the fullest, most truest sense of the word. I wake up to your cries for me and I feel lucky to be your comfort. I climb into your crib and curl myself around you. You wrap your arms around me and bury your face into my body like I am all that exists. Like all of your needs have been met.
When I was still pregnant with you, I didn’t have the words. But now, I do. I whisper “Everything” into your neck because the words I love you don’t hold all that I want to say. All that I feel. All that I know.
You’ve made me a mother.
But it’s so much more than that.
You’ve given me the purpose I never knew I had.
You’ve shown me the person I was always meant to be but never knew how to find. I was buried under the unrelenting needs of others and steeped in self-doubt so thick I could hardly move. But you pulled me out. You taught me how to guard my time and my heart, something I never knew how to do before. How to live for me and for you because there’s no part of me that is not you.
Everything. It’s you and it’s me and it’s the slow mornings when my face hurts from smiling so much.
I think of how much more I smile now that I am a mother. And how sometimes the smiles are tired, but they’re always true.
The fear and doubt and gracelessness that plagued me when I was still pregnant seem almost funny now. As soon as I held you in my arms it all melted away. The role of mother was immediate and easeful like it was there all along. How did I not see it?
And I wonder, will I always feel like this? So sure and at peace in my intuition. Will I know what to do when you’re two and you’re throwing tantrums or when you’re a teenager and you hold back your I love you’s? Will I still know how to be what you need?
As you grow and your needs reach beyond me, I want you to come back to Everything. It’s you and it’s me and it’s all the things we don’t say and all the things we do. It’s the love and the anger and misunderstandings and all the moments we feel completely seen. It’s the wins and the mistakes and the Everything in the in-between.
And when you’re older and we’re celebrating this silly holiday, I won’t ask for chocolates or flowers or gifts.
I'll only ask for you.
I’ll watch you tuck your hair behind your ear and inhale the quiet that comes with everything that we won’t need to say.
And if the words come to you, I’ll hold your hand and listen to you tell me about everything that is important to you and everything that isn’t.
I’ll hug you before you leave and rest my head on your chest and listen to the rumble of your voice when you say Everything.
Because, my darling,
it’s you and it’s me
and it’s Everything.
You can read the piece I wrote last Mother’s Day below.