Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all.  My mother has been gone for 23.5 years now.  She lived to see 2 granddaughters, though a third granddaughter was born just before she died.  She never met her grandson, and I sorely missed her during my pregnancy and birth.  I regret that she did not see the fruition of my own motherhood through the raising of two children, now adults  Though she could not see that, I did end up with a second mother who was as much a mother to me and a grandmother to my own two children as my own would have been.  I surely was twice blessed with mothers.

To be a mother is also a blessing.  "Motherhood" is an inauguration into the great mysteries of life.  Though giving birth is nothing short of commonplace, when you find yourself incubating a life inside of you, the commonplace becomes miraculous. And like all miracles, the emotions of wonder and fear exist side by side.  That our bodies are a portal to life is wondrous. The intensity of pushing out a new life to greet the world likely mimics the birth of the cosmos.

The baby is our universe.  And like all things pushed into the universe, the space between mother and child ever expands until the child is an adult.  But we are always tethered to our children by our love.  In that intervening time, we mothers give our unconditional love (in healthy family situations) to our children and guide them to develop into their own person.

Some years ago, I read in Khalil Gilbran's The Prophet, the following:

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

I believe that to be true.  It was not so clear at times how I was helping my children be true to their "self" v. my ideals.  How to know when you are wresting the steering wheel from their hand and turning down a road that they were never meant to travel v. keeping them on the road to travel safely in the direction that is their destiny?  Giving our children the freedom to be themselves is how they find themselves.  Perhaps that is the greatest gift we can give our children. 

Such a lesson for us mothers to have of being able to give unconditional love and to forgive.  We can do it for our children, but it is not so easy to practice on others.  A strange phenomena I think.  This day is a good day to reflect on that paradox and change it.  For the laws of the universe are clearly resident within us.