One Woman's Words

I love a good memoir I find myself laughing and crying and nodding my head in agreement all the way through. Kelly Corrigan's words resonate with me because they are raw and honest and in some way true for the daughter, wife and mother I am. She shares with us her vulnerability and fear, but also her strength and hope.

I heard once that an average person barely knows ten stories from childhood and those are based more on photographs and retellings than memory...You won't remember how it started with us, the things that I know about you that you don't even know about yourselves. We won't come back here.You'll remember middle school and high school, but you'll have changed by then. You changing will make me change. That means you won't ever know me as I am right now - the mother I am tonight and tomorrow, the mother I've been for the last eight years, every bath and book and birthday party, gone. It won't hit you that you're missing this chapter of our story until you see me push your child on a swing or untangle his jump rope or wave a bee away from his head and think, Is this what she was like with me?

We never go back...we're always moving forward as time marches on, and children grow up as we grow older. I already feel the profound affect of this. T. Bone leans in for a good night kiss, but only offers the top of his fuzzy head for me to plant one on. I'm invisible and he's deaf to my voice when his friends are around. It's why I let Miss Bit curl up on the couch with me for an extra ten minutes last night. She confessed to me, "My heart just needs to cuddle with you right now." Right now's all we got...sometimes it's crucial I remind myself not to let it get away.

I am your mother. The first mile of your road. Me and all my obvious and hidden limitations. That means that in addition to possibly wrecking you, I have the chance to give you what was given to me: a decent childhood, more good memories than bad, some values, a sense of a tribe, a run at happiness. You can't imagine how seriously I take that - even as I fail you. Mothering you is the first thing of consequence that I have ever done.

What can I say? Being a mother is the hardest job at times, but always the most rewarding. I find myself dreaming about what I'm going to do of consequence once my kids are on their own. Not because I'm ready for that day, but because I just know I have to start preparing now for that bittersweet point in time I know will take the wind out of my sails leaving me deflated and aimlessly drifting.

On her dear friend's yearning for motherhood she waxes,

I want her to have this thing I have that's so ordinary and tedious and aggravating, and then, so divine.

At times, it's routine and arduous and agonizing, but yes it is nothing short of sacred this job that makes me feel like I've won the lottery day after day. Sometimes I wonder how I could have been so lucky twice.