She is like the ocean–soft and powerful. Her moods come in waves, alternately lappingly playful and ferociously destructive. She is strong and resilient with a hidden undertow. And I am her steadfast shore–velvety sand and sturdy rock. Her waters shape me. Conversely my topography affects her. We are symbiotic and occasionally at odds.
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Motherhood is about becoming. One can imagine the type of mother she will be and yet mothers must be made. They are born the day one starts her relationship with her child–be it in the womb or when the child is gifted to a mother through adoption.
She made me a mother.
The day she was born I did not know if she would cry; the doctors were not sure either. She had tumors in her heart, likely some in her brain, and perhaps even her kidneys. My sweet baby girl was handed to me with a rare genetic disorder. I knitted her together with this disorder in the waters of my womb. A disorder marked by benign tumors in her vital organs, epilepsy, autism, developmental delay, behavioral issues, and more. My motherhood made by both her and her disease.
When I dreamt of motherhood I imagined myself enjoying sweet infant snuggles, playful and challenging toddlerhood, all the way to dancing at her wedding. I did not imagine hospital monitors, multiple medications, seizures, early intervention. My girl has always been beautiful, life-giving, and free as the ocean and equally as unpredictable. Motherhood is unpredictable no matter one’s imaginings. This is why mothers are created. There is a beauty and sadness in this–a loss of one’s imaginings of the mother one might be and an exquisite becoming into reality.
One tends to think of mothering one’s children into who they will become not of becoming herself. The reality is our children make us as much as we make them. They are born into this world their own beings who exist within themselves just as we existed before them with our own traits and qualities. Motherhood is about loving, nurturing, and honoring who your child is no matter what–disease, disability, difference, sexual orientation, etc. That loving, nurturing, and honoring is what shapes us–the relationship between the waters of the ocean and the steadfast shore. In turn our motherhood changes who we are as a person.
I am continually becoming.
On Joy and Sorrow 