One year goes by in a blink of an eye. When that year is a maternity leave, the blink of an eye involves exploding diapers, banging a wall and cursing while an infant screams in the background, beating up monsters at 4 a.m. or play dates that turn into the equivalent of UFC grudge matches.
I don’t think I can ever forget the first time I realized I was a mother and that I loved my child in a primitive, essential way. It was a hard night of labour, before I had gotten my c-section and passed out from tiredness. I woke up to find – surprise! – I had given birth.
Every so often, this will strike me as a huge joke. After all, most days I still feel like a teenager, and this must be an elaborate set-up where Ashton Kutcher will jump out and tell me I just got Punk’d. But here was the nurse, nestling a crying little girl in my arms and I cried out, “I love you. I’ll always be here for you,” to my little moppet. I hadn’t felt that deep a connection with my child when she was in my body, but the second I saw her face, I realized that my love was there waiting to be found all along. Ever since then, she’s been keeping me smiling, with her funny pronouncements, such as, “Mommy, I love you, but why do you have to be so difficult?” or tapping on her toy cell phone, and saying, “I’m just texting Barbie for some beer,” or the time when her baby brother was screaming and she turned to me and told me very seriously, “Kill him, Mommy.”
That is not to say it was a wonderful, sentimental journey where we basked and cuddled in the rosy glow of dawn every day. It was a hard, slug-it out fest, involving a lot of pain (similar to the kind of pain inflicted when your infant discovers how much fun it is to cram his finger all the way up your nose while breastfeeding). I could be trying to make a school lunch ready, while the baby starts crying for his breakfast, while my husband runs around asking me where his thermos and keys are, while my daughter tugs on my shirt and asks me to read her another story, while the butter falls out of the fridge and spills all over the floor and the kids decide to skate in it. Then the cat comes in and starts incessantly mewing, and I’ll have to take a deep breath and try avoid exploding like Mount Vesuvius.
A little while ago, a Huffington Post article was making the rounds on Facebook, where the author noted that as a young mom, she was constantly being told, “Enjoy this time, it goes by way too fast.” That really is a ridiculous comment. When your kid is peeing on the floor and splashing in it or biting everyone in sight (including the cat) or you have to carry your child out of someplace kicking and screaming, you think, ‘These people simply are suffering from memory loss. Maybe they had a run-in with a cranky toddler throwing a remote control and have never recovered.’ The truth is, like this author notes, us mothers are basically the last survivors on the island who are just trying to stay in one piece until bedtime, when the wildebeests finally pass out.
You can’t enjoy every minute. It’s impossible. But every so often, there is a break from the same old routines and madness, when you get to have these incredible moments with your children. It could be something so simple as them slipping their hands into yours while crossing the street, or turning and giving you a slobbery open-mouth kiss on your cheek and your heart swells a hundred times over with the joy of it, the simplicity of their love and trust. It’s moments like this when you realize you are so incredibly lucky to be alive and to be a mom.
One part of me is happy to be back at work, to pour myself a cup of tea and sit in silence to read and write, without having two ankle-biters clinging to my knees. But there’s another part of me that remembers the pain of driving away after leaving your child with someone else – it’s not a relief, it’s a physical ache of having a part of yourself removed, like a phantom limb.
It’s a pain and guilt I live every moment that they’re not by my side, that I can’t feel their soft cheek against my own, or the steady thrum of their heartbeats as they lie on my chest. But I hope that they know that whatever else happens, whatever else I choose to do besides raising them, that the first words I told them are constant until the day I die and every day after: “I love you and I’ll always be here for you.”
