Thoughts

Waking up alone, on a rainy Sunday morning, in a quiet house tends to start you considering things. I have spent twenty-seven years being a mother. I started out like any other new mother, overawed and overwhelmed with the responsibilities of a first baby and the discovery that you have depths of love inside your heart you had never known until the first time you held your newborn baby. So here I am all these years later, most of my children are grown, a few still here at home but not for long. Before I know it, the last three will be gone off into the world. Where will that leave me? Even though Caleb is just ten I already feel so un-needed, strange for me to say considering how much I have sheltered, pampered, ok babied Caleb my youngest child. Boys are independent creatures who do not cling to their mothers. None of my children really did. They were ready to go far sooner than I was ready to let them. I tried to teach them to be strong, to prepare them for the hard cruel world. Honestly I don't know if I did my job adequately I only know that I did the best I could, often under very trying circumstances. The thing is, I lost myself somewhere along the way and I do not know where to go looking for the pieces I left behind. This reflects on something I said in a previous blog, is there anyone out there who truly knows the me behind the mother or must I find ways to ensure that when I leave this world someone somewhere will truly remember me? I loved being a mother so much. Every pregnancy was more miserable than the one before, as I was sick right up until I went into labor. I survived twins and two c-sections, natural childbirth which was actually easier to recover from and epidurals that left me with lasting complications to this day. I made it through crying babies, cranky toddlers, elementary school, the nightmare of middle school, high school, bullies, teenage romances, teenage pregnancy, you name it I did it. I also worked to support my family and missed out on so many things I can never get back, but someone had to do it. I am not very close to most of my children, not by choice, but simply because they are living their own lives and I am trying to find a way to live mine, and they do not often overlap. I babysit grandchildren when asked and revel in the fun of being able to give them back to their mother's at the end of a glorious day. Grannies can spoil their darlings unabashedly and enjoy all the little things that drove us crazy when we were there in those years with our own. Is this the sum of me...mother and grandmother? I don't think it is, but does anyone else see me as more? So this is something I want to tell my children; family is everything. Being a parent is a privilege and a blessing and a responsibility. The thing is, and this is going to sound so incredibly selfish, you cannot and you must not give everything away in the process of raising your family. You must keep some small secret part of yourself locked away somewhere, so that when that inevitable day arrives and you are left alone, you can begin doing the unthinkable...living for yourself.