The circle of life and stuff

Obviously Mother's Day has changed for me since I started growing a wombmate...A few years ago the Hallmark Holiday would have typically started with me waking up to check my phone and find thoughtful and sympathetic encouraging texts from the people closest to me.  The texts would say that they were thinking of me or my mom, or how much she loved me, or how she lives on in me.  Then I might take a walk, and feel stabs of heart ache seeing others with their moms, or I would hear a love song and think about her and how she was gone forever.

Of course the past couple years on Mother's Day I still think of her and still feel a sting when the thoughts start coming into my mind:  She would have loved Penelope.  How would she have held her? Played with her?  What would Penelope call her? 

Today while Danny was upstairs giving Penelope her bath I stared at a picture of me and my mum.  In the picture I'm about Penelope's age and my mom looks so young and healthy.  And really looking at her face and remembering her, and how she really was before her illness swept her away, it started happening again.  Grief, like a sinkhole starting pulling me.  The icky sad thoughts started swimming around.  I wasn't moved to tears but it might have started had I not heard something suddenly breaking through the darkness.

From around the corner and up the stairs I heard a tiny sweet voice call meekly:

"Mommy?"

She was done with her bath, and ready for her mommy (the lucky me) to put her to bed.  Her voice instantly shot the grief and darkness back to its dusty corner.  I put the picture back on the shelf, and with a giant grin, bound toward her, up the stairs, to fold her up, cover her face with kisses, and begin our ritual of stories, songs and rocking.  No wallowing this year.  No time and no room for it.

Having my baby didn't make the pain stop.  But just kind of made it less important.  And today, I realized again how my Mother's Day is so totally different.  The emptiness it usually holds, was filled with the joy I have of being a mother myself.  (Don't get me wrong, I still almost cried today-- when Penelope was having a meltdown, exhausted and over-due from a nap.)  But otherwise, it was a really beautiful day. 

Turns out the grief of losing someone who means everything to you still can't trump the euphoria of gaining someone who means everything to you.

here she is hugging James Brown, of course....