What It Means to Be a Mother

Tomorrow is Mother's Day. The kids have been smuggling in construction paper cards, tulips made from egg cartons and pipe cleaners, and Styrofoam cups filled with green sprouts.

This is my second time around.

I was nineteen when I had my firstborn. And she was two weeks old before I fell in love with her.

Mom had come to visit for two weeks. And it wasn’t until she left that I understood what it means to be a mother.

I was lying in bed the morning after mom left, and I could hear my baby girl stirring in her crib. But I lay there, praying she would go back to sleep. She started to fuss, and again—I lay there like a spoiled teenager stealing five more minutes of shut-eye.

To this day, I can still feel those phantom hands on my back pushing me out of bed and my chest filling up with a sense of urgency like I had never felt before.

I walked into her room, and there she was. Her receiving blanket wrapped around her head and the fussing I heard was her gasping for air.

In a panic, I unwrapped the blanket and she immediately began to wail. My eyes filled with tears as I picked her up and pulled her close to me, caressing her and kissing her tiny head and whispering to her “everything is going to be all right.” It was more for me than for her.

Her cheek pressed against my chest, my heart pounding—and she stopped crying.

It was at that moment I knew I would love this person all the days of my life. A love so deep, it hurt to breathe. And it was then that I started making deals with God.

She is eighteen now. And two weeks from now I am going to Houston to watch her graduate high school.

She has been my anchor. We’ve been through so much together. Two divorces. Three marriages. The birth of the twins. But we’ve always had a motto, the two of us. “No matter what.” Regardless of what curve balls life threw our way, or what catastrophic error in judgment I made with regards to my relationships with men—we were a team.

No matter what.

She lives in Houston now. I live in Minnesota. That’s a conversation for another time. I talk to her on the phone and I want to cry—I miss her so much, it hurts. I miss her face. The dimple in her cheek when she smiles. The freckles on her nose when she’s had too much sun. Her eyes so blue and so revealing—the hurt I have caused her stares back at me with a vengeance. And yet she still loves me like she did that day she pressed her sweet face against my chest and found comfort.

Love like that can never be communicated in a Hallmark card.

She called me today. She is pregnant.

I hung up the phone and immediately ran upstairs and sought out my first Mother’s Day present. A little clay pot that I keep my spare change in, that still bears the markings of her tiny fingerprints where she pressed against the clay to form the crude bowl. It is my most prized possession.

I held it in my hands and cried. Not tears of sorrow. Although some would argue that I should not consider this a cause for celebration.

Her life is about to change. She is going to learn the meaning of worry. And heartache. And unconditional love.

And that is what I feel today.

No matter what.

Happy Mother’s Day, Diana. I love you.