Motherhood

This morning, I woke up with baby fingers poking delicately in the holes of my face. Later, after I gave up on those precious extra five minutes, my lovely, delightful 9 year old daughter knelt on my bed to ask me the kind of question that makes me think.

"Do you like Motherhood?"

Why, yes, I did just pee all over the floor.

I sit speechless as feelings, thoughts, instincts flood my brain and my baby tugs my hair.


She lives in a world where Motherhood has been shafted by the majority of educated women. I want her educated, independent, to fulfill every particle of potential she came with. I also want her to be a mother, because it's hard, she's tough, and will be the best mother in the world.

I spent some time studying preschool education, because I homeschool and think I should know about these things, and the studies show over and over, that the best is home. The best place for babies is home. The best place for mothers, is with their babies. The best. Education, resources, money, none of it can offset the magic that happens when a mother is rolling around on the floor with her babies.

This matters. This is life work that comes with no retirement fund.

But. It's hard. It's money and sleep poor, hair pullingly frustrating and mind numbingly tedious. Hard.

It's having the missionaries over for dinner last night then finding the poo patty on the couch after they left that mysteriously disappeared from the diaper while I was trying to talk the 3-year-old our of the bathroom she locked herself in after she clocked the baby with her doll. That was before dinner. Before trying to cook dinner with a baby holding onto my pants, not walking, but practicing, practicing, the same way I'm practicing not losing my temper when I have five people talking to me at the same time and I haven't had four hours of uninterrupted sleep in nine months.

But look at her. A few short years ago and it was her fists in my hair, her mouth quivering with need, seemingly endless hunger for attention, love, food, care, and time.

Now she looks at me pensively, lovely warm eyes full of life, intelligence, curiosity and concern. Her thoughtful nature, her generous heart and compassionate soul are gifts that she gives unconsciously. I had a place in that, in the creation of something so beautiful, so perfect that I couldn't have imagined the reality, the possibility that began with a tiny bundle nine years before.

I am in awe.

Like is the wrong word to use with Motherhood.

"I love it."