Kids leave bread crumbs on the couch, and barge into the bathroom while you”;re taking a shower to tell you something completely unimportant that they absolutely must tell you at that exact, precise moment.
Kids break your fancy glassware, bump your car, weasel their way out of household chores, and bring back crappy school report cards . . . and everything is okay.
Because you can never, ever unlove them.
Your body swells and scars and stretches and contracts and expands. And you love it for its ability to do so. Your heart, once housed inside of you, now beats outside of yourself in the body of someone else.
If they hurt, you hurt. If they cry, you cry. Your prayers change and become centred around them.
Please Lord, keep them safe.
Protect them.
Provide for them.
Motherhood is literally the be all and end all of being a woman. You can stop being a wife, you can stop being a lover, you can stop being a friend, but you can never ever stop being a mom.
Not even when your kids are spoiled little misfits, not even when your kids end up in jail, not even when your kids pass away.
Once you”;ve been chosen by the Great Divine to co-create, every single atom of your being, every nuance of your heart is changed – irreversibly.
Even things like words and the meaning of those words change. Words like “;alone”;. I love telling The Trolls to leave me alone. I have told them to leave me alone a thousand times, and every time they do, it takes me three minutes to go look them up, because I want to be alone, but with them.
Another thing I told them as they were packing to go for their school break to the farm?
“I can”;t wait to just recharge for the next couple of weeks. You guys exhaust me!”
And did I recharge?
Well, I did something, that”;s for sure!
I attempted to watch movies by myself, and hardly made it halfway.
I made pasta, but couldn”;t reach the bowls, because they were on the top shelf and the only people who are tall enough to reach the top shelf are The Trolls, so I ended up eating it, standing by the stove, straight out of the pot.
I cleaned the house once. And then because I didn”;t make it dirty again, I didn”;t have anything to do at home. Every single day. For 14 days.
I even went on a date, but didn”;t enjoy it because I didn”;t have them to help me get ready, or gossip with when I came home.
I did the opposite of recharging.
I decharged.
Getting out of bed happened at a snail”;s pace.
Getting through the day was like watching paint dry. Going home was like heading towards the guillotine.
In fact, the only day I actually woke up fully charged, was today, because those two buggers are finally coming home tomorrow.And I will finally have someone to fight with, struggle with, laugh with, and love again.
Because loving yourself is just no fun.
And so this acceptance of being centred outside of my centre remains the biggest and most beautiful lesson of my life.
It”;s a superpower, this motherhood thing. An unexpected, illogical, gravity-defying, life-changing, superpower.
Celebrate it.
– urbansinglemom@gmail.com
