Did you know that, in the last trimester, a baby hears her mother’s voice, and it becomes familiar? Once the infant is born, that voice will be reassuring—the baby often turning towards its mother’s voice in a room of people. This is one more example of how distinctive mothers are from anyone else in our lives. Our mothers are the ones who knew us before we were born, who will always see us as a fifth limb, a third chamber to their hearts.
Recently, my daughter (a new mom) experienced what I call “longest day syndrome.” If you’ve been a parent, you know exactly what I mean. Your baby/toddler/child is fussy, possibly ill, and so there are no breaks from their need for you. Every part of your body is touched, clung to, spat upon. Their clamminess becomes yours. It can be an overwhelming experience until 24 hours later.
That’s when you can see the longest day for the privilege it is.
For most of my life, I could never imagine having children because I don’t consider myself a very nurturing individual. How would I know what my child needs? The only instruction manual is the one we carry in our guts. What I never understood was the very real phenomenon of maternal instinct that germinates while the baby is but a cluster of cells. Until I became a mom, I never realized that the caretaking relationship starts long before mother and baby ever see each other. Even during pregnancy, we are already protecting our children: giving up alcohol, lunch meat, coffee and OTC medications so that our babies are born healthy.
The mother-child relationship is like no other. Although fathers become fathers when the baby is born, a mother becomes a mother when the baby is in utero. Only a mother knows her baby from the inside out— through the private duet we dance for nine months.
Birth is simply a matter of putting a face with the voice, a face with the kicks.
The importance of fathers lies in the fact that they become parents at birth. Their unconditional love for their children is not beget in their bodies; it is an armor they strap on the moment the little bundle is laid in their arms. Their love, their involvement is vitally different because, for them, there is that moment of falling in love, of choosing to love. Because their parenting is more intentional, fathers offer the much-needed yin to the mother’s yang.
As mothers, love is not a choice or a decision, because that baby came from the deepest part of us and, even on the longest days, carries parts of our soul with it.
I want to tell my daughter that there will be many more “longest days.” There will be longest nights, where we wait for the blessed sound of our child’s car in the driveway late at night; longest afternoons, when disappointment or rejection reduces our teen into a snotty mess on our shoulder. We spend longest hours wondering why our child is breaking our heart over and over. During longest weeks when our child is away at college, we count down the days until they return—longing for all the dirty laundry they can assail us with.
And, for those mothers who experience the worst that life has to offer—the longest years because your child is gone forever.
Because we knew our child when they were playing soccer in our tummies, whatever else we consider ourselves—career professional, artist, lover, friend, sibling, athlete—the role of mother overshadows. It’s why I keep a clay bunny (which resembles a cabbage) made by one child in kindergarten and another budding artist’s clay flower (which resembles a mushroom). It’s why there are bins in my attic with bubble dresses and blankets and reams of artwork and cards. One day when I’m gone, my daughters can go through those bins. They will probably laugh and throw the items out, wondering at their mother’s silly sentimentality. But if you’re a mom, you understand me. You, too, have bins.
It’s why, twice a year, I take down my mother’s fine china and tenderly wash it.
Motherhood is a lifetime of longest days—an unending journey. At some point we mothers will hop off the train—hopefully at a time when our children are fully independent, when we’ve begun to simply collect dust. When our voices and hands and shoulders are no longer needed.
Today is Mother’s Day, and Hallmark stores and restaurants nationwide are undoubtedly rejoicing in profit margins. But beyond the trappings and gifts, the handwritten gift certificates for backrubs and bubble baths, it is a day to embrace the mysterious magic of motherhood. Although some of us are not mothers, all of us have mothers. Theirs are the inviolable ties that bring us into the world and shadow us every step of the way.
Here’s to the mothers we have or had, the mothers we are, and the future mothers who will give birth to children who, loved and confident, will change the world.
And here’s to longest days that exhaust us, humble us, but bring us to our knees in thanksgiving for the miracle of motherhood.
IN THE MIDDLE 