Dear reader,
Washington Irving perhaps said it best:
“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.”
His words played over in my head as I sat across from my own mother, on only the second year that my grandmother wasn’t with us to celebrate Mother’s Day anymore.
The golden Jacaranda-sun caught in wisps of her hair like raindrops catch on autumn leaves, surrounded by her other children – bouncing tufts of fluff one can only assume to be dogs.
“I don’t want children. Sam is pregnant, she’s having her baby on Wednesday and she’s so brave. I can’t imagine knowing so far ahead of time that I was scheduled for such major surgery – you can’t even chicken out of it. It has to happen. That’s terrifying,” I told my mother, steam swirling from my coffee cup past my nose.
“Trust me, by the time you’re full term – you can’t wait to give birth. You’re brazen and shameless when it gets to that point,” my mother said.
But I didn’t know – both the idea of a c-section and natural birth are on par with Nightmare on Elm Street to me.
I’m incredibly scared of any medical attention, and at nine months it’s inevitable that you’re going to need some.
I work with what can only be described as a ‘pack’ of mothers – some of the most dedicated maternal figures I know, who have not only given birth but have also courageously stormed into violent protests to get “that front page picture.”
These women, who could stare down political leaders and call their bluff smirking, but who were simultaneously wrapped around the sticky fingers of their children – were, to me, the perfect maternal paradox.
Part wolf, part saint.
On Wednesday, the day after this paper has appeared in your local grocery store, Sam will give birth to a baby boy who has been long awaited.
As I scroll through Facebook, her – and the people around her’s – excitement soon becomes apparent.
No mention is made of the major surgery, of anxiety, of fear – instead, messages telling the baby how loved he was already.
His first outfit was already picked out.
I don’t know if I could fill my own mother’s shoes, or my grandmother’s – nor any of the mom-pack who I work with.
It’s no doubt that mothers deserve a day all of their own.
Perhaps not all of us were made to be mothers – but it’s undoubted that those who were are the bravest among us; not only for the physical pain they endure to bring us into this world, but also for the lifetime commitment they made in rearing us.
Here’s to moms.
Anxiously yours,
Aimee
