Mother's Day

In honor of mother's day coming up I thought I'd post what I wrote for a Mother's Day contest with the prompt "Motherhood is..."  It was a lot tougher to write the essay than I thought it would be.  But I'm glad I tried to come up with something because I was happy to be reminded what a doggone rad thing motherhood really is, every painful, joyful part of it.

Motherhood is...



Motherhood is an ache when you hear your baby cry.  It is a panic to hold, and bounce, and whisper “ch” and “sh” and any other phoneme that sounds like the blood that whooshed through your veins when the baby was safe inside you.

Motherhood is dreaming of your child eating three different types of vegetables at the dinner table, but being totally jazzed and proud when she swallows anything other than ramen noodles.

Motherhood is battling a hungry two-year old, while hearing the bus drive away without your kindergartner, while holding a baby who just spit-up all over your shoulder.

Motherhood is singing Happy Birthday with eyes shining in equal parts pride and pain because the thing that used to cling to you like a chimpanzee is choosing which college it wants to attend without you.

Motherhood is the heart-ripping hope and desire through negative pregnancy tests, miscarriages, and stillbirths that you too will get to have sleepless nights spent rocking  tireless babies.

Motherhood is steadily blotting at your child’s bloody leg when you’d much rather pass out, throw up, or at least cry.

Motherhood is suddenly realizing that the reason your offspring picks her teeth when she is nervous is because you do.

Motherhood is being sincerely torn about whether it would be better to let your child go out the front door that day and experience life or to keep him locked up in the house smothered in life obscuring kisses.

Motherhood is biting your lips to keep from crying heart-touched tears at the school play as you watch your little girl perform so proudly her role as Townsperson #3.

Motherhood is trying to tamp down the burning fire of passionate anger at the somebody who told your kid that they walked with a hitch in their giddy-up, even though you know that giddy-up needs to be unhitched.

Motherhood is being enraptured enough by another human being that you have to steady yourself on somebody else’s shoulder when your girl smiles at you because it makes you feel that swooningly happy.

Or in other words,

Motherhood is a fusillade of soul-pricking sensation.

Motherhood is a detonation in your heart that sends shrapnel slinging into the hearts of those closest to you.

Motherhood is shards of heart being slung from body to body, from the beginning of motherhood until now, so that

Motherhood, really, is the beating of Eve’s heart in yours.