Lately,I’ve begun to look on motherhood as an initiation into“real life”.I don’t think I realized until Jana’s birth that the life I’d led previously—relatively free,easy,and affluent—is not the life led by most people—past or present.By becoming a mother,I seem to have acquired automatic membership into a universal club made up of uncertainties and vulnerabilities,limitations and difficulties,and sometimes,unsolvable problems.Of course,the club has its benefits,too.
When Jana wakes from her afternoon nap and,so happy to see me,gives me her radiant full-face smile,I smile back and feel on my own face the smile you used to give me when I woke up in the morning.Or,when Jana does something particularly cute,I’ll glance up at Gary,and in the look we exchange I see the one I remember crossing between you and dad at opposite ends of the dinner table.It was a look full of feelings I never knew until now.
When I hold Jana close to me and look down to see my hand tight across her chest.Or when I tuck a blanket around her while she sleeps and touch the skin of her cheek.I see your hands(those hardworking hands with their smooth oval nails,steady and capable and caring)doing the same things.Then I feel as if some of the love and security you gave to me through those hands is now in mine,as I pass that love on to Jana.
The other day Jana fell asleep against my arm.I must have spent fifteen or twenty minutes staring at her,marveling at the wheat color of her hair,the suppleness of her skin,her perfect tiny red mouth,moving now and then in sleep.What a rush I felt,of love and wonder,of care and luck,and more.I suddenly remembered something I saw on your face last summer,when I was home on a visit shortly after Jana’s birth.
We were sitting on the glider swing in the backyard.It was a lovely morning,cool there in the shade,and the air was full of fragrance from your rose garden.I was holding Jana,who seemed to enjoy the gentle movement of the swing.
But I wasn’t enjoying anything just then.I’d had a rough night.Jana was six weeks old and had been up every few hours.I,fretful and nervous as only a new mother can be,had been having trouble falling back to sleep between her feedings.I was cranky and tired,and not feeling cheerful about this motherhood business at all.
Sitting on the glider,we talked—or rather,I talked,letting loose my load of anxiety and frustrations on you.And out of the blue,you reached over to touch my hair.
“It’s so pretty.”you said,an odd expression on your face.“The way the sun is hitting it just now...I never noticed you had so many red highlights before.”
A little embarrassed,preoccupied with other thoughts and problems,I shrugged off your comment.I don’t know what I said,something short and dismissive,no doubt,as I waved away the compliment.But your words affected me.It had been a long time since someone had seen something truly beautiful in me,and I was pleased.
It has taken me this long to realize that the look you gave me that day is the same look I give her almost daily.And it makes me wonder:Is it possible that you still see the miracle in me that I see in Jana?Does the magic continue even when your children are grown and gone and parents themselves?Will I look at Jana in thirty years and still feel the same rush of love for her that I do now?
It almost hurts to think of that kind of love.It’s too vulnerable,too fragile.I know well the barriers that spring up between parents and their children over the years,the frictions,the misunderstandings,the daily conflicts and struggles,the inevitable pulling away and final break for independence.I ache to think that someday Jana will grow up and wave away my tentative words of love as I did yours.
What happens to that first strong rush of love?Is it lost somewhere along the way,buried beneath the routine practicalities of caring for a growing child?Or is it there all along unvoiced and unexpressed,until,perhaps,a new child is born and a mother reaches out to touch her daughter’s hair?
That,it seems to me,is the real miracle:the way a mother’s love is rediscovered,repeated,passed on again and again—as it has been handed down in our lives from you to me,from me to Jana,and from Jana,perhaps,to her own children.It is a gift in itself.
I guess what I’ve been meaning to say all along is,thanks,Mom.