Intimacy in Motherhood

Not until I became a mom, myself, did I understand the full beauty of celebrating motherhood and the most intimate of connections, that between mother and child.  Becoming a mom changes everything.  Previously, I felt great pride in my career, in my educational achievements; I saw myself as able to make choices about career and family in similar ways as a man.  I had known great romantic love and, in part, I identified myself in light of this fortunate connection.  I felt connected to my own mom in a very deep and fulfilling way.  And then I received the news...

Life, a new life, filled my body, took over my body, occupied my mind and my very soul.  This new life grew and made its presence ever more known until it overflowed.  This rite of passage brought me great pain, a great pain that signaled to me that I am in touch with the profound, that I have immense power, that I have created and will nurture...life!  This life, removed from the safety of that special place within, is now an organ, a heart, a lung, a life-sustaining tissue all soft and delicate, raw and unscathed...vulnerable.  It is my new role in life to protect this beautiful vulnerable miracle that has journeyed outside my body and in it's place filled me with awe.

No more is the strength in career and professional achievements, no more do I live for myself alone.  A love unlike any I have ever known has sprouted within me.  It is a love the feeds on itself.  It is a love that that is so big it couldn't get any bigger, and yet, it grows...  a daydream, a longing, a preoccupation, absolute peace and fulfillment, bundles of nerves and worry, everything I ever wanted but never realized, all tinted with that pain, the labor which brought me my first exchanged glance.

And now the time has quickened its pace.  We've captured that first glance and collapsed in one another's arms, exhausted from our journey which brought us together.  I enter this daydream state, this dance that introduces me to the one for whom I've known no greater love, and I slowly awaken.  I see first smiles, mumblings, first tooth, first word, crawling, walking... and when I awaken, this quickened clock which I wish I could pause, has watched my little delicate bundle develop into a beautiful soul with her very own opinions, her very own tastes and styles and passions, her very own friends, her very own life...

I have climbed mountains and have been filled with great awe, I have visited wonders created by humans with great passion and commitment, I have known and observed romantic love which rippled out in great quakes across the earth, but when I look into the eyes of a child, when I gaze into the eyes of my children, when I caress their soft skin, smell their innocent spirits, watch their movements, capture an expression, see a smile, hear laughter and little footsteps shuffling across the floor, hear "I love you," I know that life holds no greater love, no more amazing wonder, no more profound connection than the bond between mother and child.