Becoming

Somewhere along the way, I have become a mother.  I don't mean on the day my first daughter was born when it seemed so weird to say "that's my daughter," or the time that I fumbled through teaching her to walk or even when I introduced her to her younger sister-because I don't think that it happened in one moment.

I think it was a million little failures, fears and maybe 100 successes.  I think that I knew that I was their mother, but I didn't understand that, at the core of my being, I AM a mother.  I think that living in the neverending, messy confusion of early motherhood and waiting for something to happen, something to change, I didn't feel the subtle and important changes happening in my core.

When my eldest daughter was born she was beautiful and disgusting-all covered in goo and blood and screaming.  I looked at her and marveled at her perfection and immediately thought "Oh shit, I have to take her home."  I was completely terrified and projectile vomited all over my hospital room after eating two purple popsicles and didn't sleep again for 3 years and still I craved her snuggles, smiles, words, and laughter.  Somewhere, I started to feel that mother-ness...

Maybe it was when my youngest was born and I felt like my heart was going to explode with joy when I saw my two beautiful girls together.  Maybe it was teaching my littlest and last baby the same things I had taught my eldest, and having her happily help her sister.  Maybe it was just a culmination of experiences, laughter, tears and exhaustion that finally makes me feel that I am more than just me.
Motherhood is transcendent.  It is really realizing that you are not who you were before.  You can never be that person again.   You can't be that person who didn't understand how your mom could have been soooooo mean to you that time.  Oh, you understand.  Mom, I totally get it.  Even more than that, you know why she came to everything for you-all of your concerts, games, so many sports things sitting on those horrible bleachers, and she was the ultimate fan of whatever you were doing at the time.  That is being a mother.

Being a mother is knowing that you can never, ever be the same person you were before your children were born, because they have helped you grow into something that is more complicated, more beautiful, better than before.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point I became not just me, but a mother, and it is terrifying and wonderful and frustrating and every other adjective you could think of.
But I wouldn't change a second of it.