The Writing Stick

LETTER TO MYSELF

Is your seatbelt fastened? 

You have unconsciously or consciously chosen a life of service. 

There will be perfect, tiny fingers like tree branches that reach for your face. Unimaginable smiles cast in your direction. You will be wooed like an ardent lover with your child’s immeasurable longing for you. 

In the beginning, a mother is an entire universe.

If you knew then, what you know now, would you have, should you have, could you have, stopped what trivial thing you were doing, and savored every moment of such rapturous love? 

But there will be trespassing on that love. 

Wait. I didn’t want to be a mother at 20. What is and what can never be.  

But the sight of my daughter took me by surprise. 

I was afraid to love her and lose myself in a life I didn’t dream. 

Love is more powerful than fear Lisa. 

Mesmerized, I studied the fine veins that radiated through Jenny’s skin, rose and purple river marks. Tracing them with my hand, the arduous journey of her birth disappeared, and what remained was her intense vulnerability as she took her first breath. 

Power. To bring life into the world through my body. Great power requires great responsibility. 

I remember, I remember, her fierce devotion and need for me, but was soon buried underneath soiled diapers, missing baby shoes, fevers, and backaches. 

Try to understand the natural order of things. Stay awake. There will be transcendent moments. 

The day to day churning of endless laundry, the ferris wheel of fastening and unfastening car seats. Sudden fevers, midnight earaches and milky days change within days, into a march of footsteps. Then running, racing through the house, stray socks, missing homework, hordes of meals tucked between years of unruly complexions, dispositions, adolescent commotion and teenage rejection. 

All the words that I never wanted heard by sleeping children, or partners, as I lay exhausted after bedtime. “Is this all thee is, I ask myself?” 

While I care for you, who cares for me? 

Fight not to lose your center here. Make a new place for yourself. 

You are moving through the toughest part of the jungle. Remember that violent storms bring rainbows. I don’t know how I know but you will get to the other side without causalities .. 

The leaving then returning of your children, their leaving again, is not personal, despite what I feel. 

I know that you too, will want to go, rediscover who you are, but remember the timeless pact. Part of your service is to remain steadfast, you are the guardian of a great ship. 

Motherhood is a timeless tale of courage of surrender.