Motherhood

I have headphones in with loud, and I mean really loud, AfroPop covering and basically obscuring the sound of the children frying themselves eggs for lunch and strewing pickels and juice around the floor. Because we have an ant problem, that's why, if you were about to ask. I thought I would sit here for an hour or so, you know, and draw out my calender for the week, and finally blog, and sift through the piles of paper that accumulated on my desk while I was Doing All the Laundry. Thank Heaven for the internet. If I had Done All The Laundry but remained in obscurity, not announcing it on facebook and twitter, then, Oh My Word, that would have been awful.

But chief on my mind is that a wonderful person, named Laura Lynn Brown, who I have gotten to know because of the wonderful Internet (I mean, honestly, aren't we all just pathetically grateful? for the internet I mean, and all the connections and human contact, And distactions it offers?) and who I hope one day to meet in person, has put together a new site called Makes You Mom. You should all go check it out. She's shoved me in there, amongst real, true, fine and interesting writers, so, you know, go look at it.

Its sort of karmic, or maybe the word I'm looking for is ironic, because I, in spite of having given birth six individual times and, as it were, homeschooling, which means being with my own children all day long every day, Don't Really Feel Like a Mother. Motherhood is something most of us, I guess, chose, by having children. You fall in love. You think, you know what would be great, having a kid. So you have one. And then another and another. But you don't really stop and think, Hmm, would I be a good mother? You don't really think about it at all. You just keep changing diapers and spreading peanut butter on everything. And then you wake up and discover that other people, who are just becoming mothers, or who are thinking about becoming mothers, are asking you questions, like 'Is it normal that my baby is doing this?' and 'How did you get your baby to do such and such?' And you chat along and offer reams of advice, and as the words are spilling out of your mouth, you see that you did Become a Real Mother. You are, in fact, a Mom. And you write a Mom Blog. That's who you are and what you do.

And it should be counted as a gift. My children are a gift, a treasure, sniff. And I'm their mother. We owe each other a great deal. Love on both sides. It doesn't matter that I don't feel like a mom. I am one. And they are children. And so there you are.