momhood

Putting my youngest daughter Allie to bed the other night she asked a question that stumped me, “How and where do you learn to be a mom?” She was thinking there must be a school somewhere to attend, or classes to take. After a serious pause in my reply I managed to come up with an answer, “You learn from your own mother.”

As the words rolled out of my mouth a harsh reality hit me smack in the heart. Simply by being this little girl’s mother I am going to dictate not only the childhood she will experience, but also what kind of mother she will be to her own. Oh geez, no pressure there, at all.

I had always imagined the greatest moment of parenting would be from some profound moment in time when a gush of enlightenment somehow spewed from my mouth at the exact moment in time that it was so definitively required. And within that moment, I would be elevated to the podium of motherhood that would send me straight to sainthood and change my blessed girl's lives forever. Well, maybe I never really thought that, but it’s a funny fantasy none the less.

I’m pretty sure what my whole motherhood thing boils down to is the micro-moments of any given day. I mean the little ways I react, or choose not to react, or in the slight influx of my voice, or the hug I steal when one of my girls pass by, or the smile I send her way just because. It's in that space where (hopefully) my children learn what it is to not only be a kid, but also be a mother.