The 'Whatever Mom'

Mother's Day is this Sunday and I've contemplated the day more this year than any other. My guess is that with my children being older & a bit more self sufficient I've had more time for genuine thoughts of my own ;-) When I was younger I never thought that I wanted to be a mother. I never had any particular fondness for children and still don't per say. Becoming a mother has made me more appreciative of children and of mothers as a whole but I don't like children just because they're children. I like them the same as I like all other people. If the child is likable, I like them. If not, I don't... Although I've never been able to decide if I like mine because they're really likable or if I like them just because they're mine. I assume it's a mixture of both because in all honesty, sometimes children just aren't very likable. I would never consent to a friendship with someone whose ass I had to wipe or who felt free to vomit on me and make me clean it up. But there's something in the very nature of motherhood that makes it divine. It's a biological realm of unexplanable goodness. There's the mammal's desire to see her offspring thrive & mother's willingness to eliminate any obstacles in order for them to survive and  then there's the homosapian's need to give, nurture and form life long relationships with her children. It is truly "divine design".


I'd be willing to bet on my life that I love and care for my children just as much as any other mother I know. But my identity has never been encompassed by motherhood. I haven't sacrificed any less because I've refused to identify myself solely as "mother". I haven't missed out on any joys because I don't feel a pressing biological need to continue to reproduce. And I doubt that my children are any more likely to be more mal-adjusted than anyone else's because I worked when they were little and their father did most of the cooking until very recently. I think my kids are going to be just as screwy as anyone else who survives adolesence. And hopefully when they're self supporting with families of their own they'll come to see their parents and welcome visits from the people they've always known us to be. I hope that I'll be just as much "me" then as I am now. I never want my daughter or son to entertain the idea that they stripped me of my life or my identity. I want them to know always that they enriched it and made it more worthwhile. I don't want to be a fragment of myself when they grow up and move away. I want to carry them into every phase of my life as the essential burden that made it so beautiful. Children are in fact a burdenous gift. They are work and hurt to which nothing else can compare. And our primary focus is on that of any other instinctually driven mammal... their survival.

The potent burdens of motherhood is what fuels its complexity and helps to drive me half mad. But its bouquet of pleasantries is a reward worthy of my very life, should I ever be called to give it.