Mother's Day

It's Mother's Day. I get to sleep in while Bret and Henry make breakfast, so I won't worry about not being able to sleep right now.

I wish I could say that today was nothing but love and joy for me, because in many ways being a mama is all about love and joy. But it's far more complicated than that, particularly this year. There are several elements to explain, so I will do my best to unravel things, partly because working them out in some sort of order will, hopefully, help me think them through too.

First: Becoming a mama opens your heart to this deep, infinite well of love and emotion. To be able to love as purely and deeply as you love your babies is, in short, indescribable. I don't think I can even begin to think about putting words to it, because it is so intense, so personal, and so mutable. It's also so deep that you hardly notice it most of the time. But, it also opens you up to a range of emotions that make it hard not to be affected by the world in very personal ways, even when things have nothing to do with you. Everything becomes immediate if it can be at all related to your family, even in purely analogous ways. Your range for empathy increases infinitely, and, let me tell you, pregnancy hormones increase that range even further.

Second: I have never dealt with death in healthy ways. You could say I just don't deal with it, and that would be an understatement. I have been to one funeral in my life, in fourth grade (my great grandfather's). I just have not been able to bring myself to go. I have been fortunate not to lose many people I care deeply about, but have not been able to learn how to grieve in healthy ways.

Third: I miss my friend. Losing a mama friend just before Mother's Day makes it hard to find pure joy in being a mama on this day. It shouldn't, and I know I need to move on. And I will. But I miss her. I miss her particularly in this moment when I am days away from giving birth to my second child, and feeling excited and incredibly terrified. I miss her for selfish reasons (I wish I had her wisdom with me, and her assurance, and her love), and feel so much guilt about how poorly I have dealt with missing her.

I wish I could say that being a mama, today, was pure love and joy. I wish that I could say that about to become a mama again was nothing but exciting. But I'm scared. And sad. And also filled with love and joy so boundless I never knew it was possible.

I don't know if only mamas get to know emotion so deep that it explains the concept of infinity, but certainly it's a mama law that mamas get to know it.