From March 17, 2012
Today my mom wanted to take a video of me on her cell phone. I was slightly flattered and a little bit awkward. I am used to being the one who wants to record people. Scarcely does anyone record me. That happens when you grow up. Or maybe I spent so long taking a backseat that I just grew accustomed to not being the one recorded or photographed.... not being the one to shine.
It was just a regular day. Nothing special or out of the ordinary. Except I was wearing a headband. A headband with a burnt orange flower hanging off of it. I looked like a hippie girl.
I saw a look in my mother's eyes as she stared at that headband and her daughter, smiling, having just sat outside reading a book in the sunshine. Her daughter, who is sick everyday and only recently, her daughter who has started laughing again.
I knew inside why she wanted to take a video of me.
It's the way I feel about recording Little. The way I feel when I watch her color or count or speak grown-up words from little pink lips. Watching her discover life for the first time. I am in love, fascinated by those little eyes, captivated by that small human who taught me how to love just by existing.
It's how my own mother must feel.
How she has felt.
It's a love that is strong and almost too delicate to explain. I, for absolute certain, never once understood the desperate, rooted in, forever feeling of pure devotion to anyone or anything until I fell in love with that tiny child. She is not born of my flesh. Sperm did not meet my egg to create her essence, but God surely did knit her in my heart even before she came into being.
She is mine in any way she could be, except by flesh. I did not bleed and bear her from my womb, grunting and sweating with the pains of labor nor do I carry physical scars of flesh cut open to reveal her to the world.
But oh, how I have wept for her.
How I have protected her, cradled her in arms near my heart swollen with love.
A love so blinding, so severe
that it crushed as much as it filled up.
Never once did I need to record....
with fingertips, with eyes, with heart
until I knew how it felt to be a mother.
I now know that a mother's heart is wide and strong,
stronger then anyone else's.
I now know that birthing a child truly does not make one a mother.
A mother is...
time and love and teaching and raising and singing soft songs in the night, rubbing soft baby skin and soothing and adoring and everything worth it because you want that child to know love and be love and give love
and that ache in the heart....
the one that never leaves. The one that calls and demands an answer,
"child of mine, where are you?"
I feel so fortunate to know this love.
As the giver, but
as a receiver too.
Could I have loved Little so?
If I had not been rocked and comforted and laughed with and adored?
If my own mother did not stop
that pause of love
just that headband and that sunshine pouring in through the glass,
nothing extraordinary
highlighting that smile
to record me
with eyes lit up
as I discover life for the first time?
