Here's a hard truth....God doesn't care what brand your purse is. God doesn't care how big your house is, what kind of car you drive, or how many presents are under your Christmas tree.

As a little girl, like tons of other little girls then and now, I dreamed of getting married. It wasn't just the dress, the flowers, the music, the people. I wanted the love. You know the kind; that dreamy sort of love that all the pop songs are written about. Mariah Carey's Vision of Love; that's what I wanted. But of course, being the awkward curly haired mess that I was (and still am some of the time) it just didn't happen. As a teenager, I was the popular topic of many a rumor but my imaginary life was much more exciting than my real one. I can honestly say I never once got asked to a school dance. Not even once. I always went with friends of friends or, like at my senior prom, I went with my friend's little brother. Yup, that was my life. In college, I didn't fair much better but I tried. My one gift when it came to relationships was trying to make one where one wasn't. I was always "the friend." You know, the kind with benefits who wasn't a girlfriend and would never get introduced to the friends or the parents but was around to hang out with and take advantage of. This never went well for me as it doesn't in many situations but the pattern was hard to break. Until junior year of college when I was taking a creative writing class. Creative writing classes are notoriously touchy feely and it can be a little uncomfortable for someone who avoids eye contact and talking about my life in front of strangers (me) but I did it anyway. It was credit for my major and it was relatively easy. When our professor made us set up the chairs in the classroom so that we were all facing each other in a makeshift circle, I was seated directly across from the most friendly face that I had ever seen in my life. I should mention, my chronic resting bitch face is not a recent condition. I've had it since I was little. Because of this I was particularly nervous about the friendly face before me but he didn't seem to care that I always looked like I was about to stab someone or that I rolled my eyes without noticing it sometimes. He smiled at me anyway. With his whole face. Eyes, mouth, cheeks, he almost seemed to exude happy and it was magnetic. It took almost the entire semester before we actually talked to each other and to be honest, I'm not sure who called whom or how it all went down but he invited me over to his apartment and from that day forward, I only went home when I absolutely had to. I had found it. Mariah Carey's vision and mine. Love. For the first time in my life, I was the best version of myself and someone really loved me for me. I didn't have to hide or fake it. I didn't have to run away before his friends showed up or stay quiet when his mom called. He loved me and he was proud of me and we were happy. And it lasted all of 8 weeks. I would like to tell you that we broke up, that the bubble burst. That he cheated on me. But that's not what happened. What happened was that he died. He died and he left me alone and I went from being the happiest that I'd ever been in my life to feeling the kind of grief that makes you feel like you're being buried alive. It was another major blow in my life that year. Having had an abortion and ending a relationship with someone who loved me but wasn't in love with me, I was already grieving when he came into my life and brought me to life and now I was grieving his death and my death and the death of any hope that I'd had that things were going to be ok for me, that I was going to be ok. That dreams do come true and love exists.

I'd like to say that in the 11 years that have passed, that I've found love again and love reigns supreme once more. And that's true in a way. I've never felt more perfect or terrifying love than I have for my children. When I see them, I see love. But I also see the what ifs. What if he had lived? What if these were the kids we were meant to have together? What if we had gotten our happily ever after? I have a husband. I love my husband but not the way I loved him. Our love is heavy. We our both hardened, jaded people and we struggle. And I sometimes feel like a fraud because the memory of the man that I loved first, that I loved easily, that I loved lightly, is in my mind and in my heart every day. I wonder if my husband knows that sometimes when I look at him, I'm wishing he was someone else. I wonder if he knows that sometimes I hold him to an impossible standard. I am hoping he can't tell that I still grieve and grieve hard. And I wonder if he knows that sometimes I feel like I'm cheating on my first love. The easy love. The fairy tale love. I wonder if he knows that sometimes, when the hurt is really bad, I feel like all of this is wrong.

Grief is a work in progress. It never really goes away and it can manifest itself in so many different ways. It's been 11 years and some days it feels like a lifetime ago. Some days I can barely remember his voice and other days it's like I just saw him yesterday. And I miss him. I miss the way he brought out the best in me when so often I feel like I'm falling short. I miss the way he truly believed that I could do anything. I miss the way he was always genuinely happy to see me. I miss it all. The logical side of me is very aware that at some point it might have gone away. We would have fought. Life would have gotten in the way. We would have gotten on each other's nerves or hurt each other's feelings and maybe the honeymoon would have ended. Those things could have happened but they didn't. We had 8 weeks of love the ripples of which I will feel the rest of my life. I have a lifetime of grief ahead of me but also a lifetime of memories. A lifetime of love.

Mourning Mom

I've always had a little bit of jealousy for people that have good relationships with their mothers. When I was little, I didn't know it was jealousy. I just knew that what I had in my mother wasn't what I saw around me. As I got older, I thought that maybe if I could just change myself I would be able to make my mom into the person I wanted her to be. The mom I needed her to be. But that wasn't the case. Nothing I did was ever good enough or extreme enough to jolt her into a state in which she was able to experience maternal instinct. Or at least let me experience some feeling of "mom" coming from her. The irony of the situation is that my mom is a teacher. I've watched her shower her students with affection for most of my life. Letting them hold her and touch her in the ways that I wanted too but wasn't allowed to because I was constantly in the way, or she didn't have time, or I was just too clingy too needy for her to pay any mind to. Some of my earliest memories of my mom aren't pleasant ones. I remember her smoking and crying in the dining room with all of the windows open. I remember her dismissing my tears and frustration by putting a belt on the door knob in front of my bedroom and telling me that if I continued to cry, she would give me a reason to cry. I remember wanting to touch her face and always being told that I couldn't because I would mess up her make up. I remember then watching one or another of her students touching her face and not knowing how to deal with the rejection. I remember being told that if she could go back in time, she never would have had kids. In other words, my sister and I had ruined her life and she would be happier if we didn't exist. What I don't remember is being held. Or encouraged. Or told that I was special or important or that I mattered.

As an awkward pre-teen, I remember being told that I had embarrassed her in front of one of her friends and getting back handed in the face so hard it made my nose bleed. Of course we were in the car and I bled on the upholstery so that was just more justification for her rejection. It was soon after that that I decided that I would do anything to try to please her. I had come to the conclusion that it was my fault that she couldn't or wouldn't act like a mom. So I set out to make her happy. Get good grades? Check! Lose weight? Check! Be popular and accepted by my peers? Check! I was on a quest to make her love me and would stop at nothing. It wasn't smooth sailing and by no means was I an easy child to love at this point. No. I didn't know how to accept kindness and I wasn't very good at returning it. I had a bit of a bad attitude and was "looking for love in all the wrong places" as the song goes. But I didn't know any better at this point in my life. It wasn't until my mom decided I needed therapy (in lieu of actually talking to me herself) when I was 16 that I began to get a better picture of what my family life was really like. It was that first therapist that called my mom into a session one day and explained to her that my problems wouldn't be solved by therapy alone but by her stepping up and being a better mom. Basically, what I needed was to be parented. This wasn't an easy pill to swallow for the woman who had been telling me that she was done raising her kids since my sister moved out. I was 10 when my sister moved out. Needless to say, I didn't ever go back to that particular therapist and nothing at home changed except my mother now had a reason to hate me. In her mind, I had lied to the therapist and now she had a justifiable reason to treat me the way she did. It was at this point that my mom decided that I am crazy and because I am crazy I don't deserve any respect or any thing at all really. In her eyes, I'm mentally deficient. I'm paranoid, I'm anxious, I'm angry, I'm depressed, I'm bitter. All accusations that have been hurled at me and used as justification for being treated like garbage. For my mother, this is reason enough to hate me. I won't deny that I've never felt these things. I have. We all have. I've been especially depressed, angry, and bitter when it comes to dealing with my relationship with her. I don't live there though. I don't live in my depression, I don't live in my anger, I don't live in my sadness. They are visitors in my life that show up on my door step on occasion but I don't let them stay. I refuse. My mother has never acknowledged this though and from this point on, I was not allowed to show emotion in front of her. Crying is only evidence that I am depressed. Yelling, that I am angry and bitter.

This got progressively worse through college. I moved into the dorms at 17 because she no longer wanted me at home. I did what she wanted me to do. I got good grades, I worked, I tried to be the person that she seemed to want me to be so that she would love me. And then I got pregnant. I was 19, I was a junior in college. I had gotten pregnant from a guy who was already in a relationship with somebody else (this I didn't find out until after I told him I was pregnant) and was never committed to me to begin with. I had moved back home at this point, having done a stint in the dorms and then in my sorority house. I remember very clearly the night that I told my mom I was pregnant. She actually guessed before I had said anything. My mom always anticipated the worst in me anyway, getting knocked up at 19 for the sole purpose of disgracing her was totally something that was on my agenda. And of course more fuel for her justification of her feelings toward me. I said, "I need to tell you something." She said, "Let me guess. You're pregnant." There was a long pause after which she said, "You need to get rid of it or you need to get out of my house." That was the end of it. Have an abortion or be homeless. Homeless with a kid. Of course, I was met with a similar reaction from the father of the baby. "I'm engaged to someone else, get rid of it...I'll get you the money." And sure enough, he coughed up the nearly $1,000 that it cost to have an abortion in 2004. On February 13th, 2004 I had an abortion. It was Friday the 13th. It was snowing. It was sad and it was scary and it happened.

I essentially chose between my mother and my baby and my mother won. That's how desperate I was to please her. In some way, I thought that if she saw how much I was willing to sacrifice, she would see that I loved her and she would love me back. But of course that wasn't the case and I was left now not only without the love and support of my mother, I no longer had my baby or the father of my baby in my life either. Don't get me wrong. I've come to accept that it was my decision and that it was the best decision at the time. It was also the loosening of the thread that would begin the unraveling of my desire to have my mother in my life and it was then that I gave myself permission to grieve the mom that I would never have. It was then that I came to the painful realization that she wasn't going to change and that I couldn't make her. Nothing that I could or would ever do would make her into the mom I needed so I began to let her go.

Grief in and of itself is a complicated process. The amount of time that it takes to go through the stages of grief is not set in stone and every one is different. Grieving someone who is still very much alive and well is even more complicated. There have been so many moments along the way that I've wanted my mom and I've called out for her. Begging for her help. For her love. For some sort of reassurance that everything is going to be ok. That I'm going to be ok. That I am ok. Of course, it doesn't happen and it only serves to hurt me in the process.

When I got married, I really wanted the whole experience. The wedding, the picking out dresses, the planning, the dreaming, the hoping. But it didn't happen. My mother's main concern when it came to my wedding was how she felt about it. After about the fifth conversation with her about how excited she was to take my nieces shopping for dresses for my wedding, I gave up. We couldn't afford a wedding and he was getting deployed. My husband and I got married at the courthouse. Neither one of my parents were invited.

Soon after we were married, I got pregnant. Not planned but I was married this time. I had a masters degree. I had a home. My husband was going to be on a yearlong deployment and here we were newlywed and expecting a baby. As an expectant, I longed for my mom to be there with me. To ease my anxiety, to hold my hand, to experience the pregnancy with me since my husband wouldn't be able to. Despite the fact her response to my news, "Are you stupid?" I still hoped that she would come around and want to be apart of the experience. But her idea of being involved was based more on what was convenient for her than anything else. My son was born via c-section after a failed induction because I developed pre-eclampsia at 37 weeks. Not terribly uncommon but he was early and my husband wasn't scheduled to come home on leave for another week. It was a situation that would have been difficult under the very best circumstances made more difficult because I just wanted my mom to be a mom and she couldn't or wouldn't do it. So I made up my mine to let her go again. Start the process of mourning mom all over again.

I'm like the dog that gets kicked and keeps coming back for more so powerful is my need or desire to be mothered. 

As my son has grown and especially when I had my daughter, the hurt of not having a mother has taken a new shape. The hurt is still there, the longing, the desire to share my experiences with someone who should be able to empathize or at least offer a kind word but also the realization that I could never do to my kids what my mother has done to me. I would never ever let me children feel like they were nothing, or that they were in the way, or that they weren't wanted. I love my children. My love for my children is fierce. They are very loved, very wanted, very special and I make sure that they know that. Part of my job as a mother is to protect my children from harm and now that includes making sure that my mother doesn't have the ability to them to do to them what she's done to me and that they are not made to witness the kind of verbal abuse that I've been subjected to my whole life. I used to think that it was important for my kids to have grandparents in their lives. My husband's family is just as screwed up as mine and his parents have no relationship with my kids so I figured my parents could fit the bill. I would let them be the grandparents. I have been willing to tolerate my mom's disapproval and hatred of me because she was good to my kids. She seemed to make them happy. But this is no longer the case.

A part of me feels guilty, like I'm robbing my children of something. And I guess, in a way, I am. They won't have a close relationship with any of their grandparents despite the fact that they are all still alive and able bodied. Grandparenting, like parenting, is a privilege. And when a privilege is abused, it should be taken away. As a parent, it's my responsibility to make that call. In doing so, I will be forced to mourn mom in a way that's permanent and hopefully after all of this time will finally lead to some real closure. My desire to protect my children outweighs my desire to have a mom.  For them I will be a mom. The kind of mom that they need. For them, I will let her go. I will let her go totally and completely and finally.

The Poop

My 3 year old is recently potty trained. Too recently perhaps. The traumatic memories are still pretty painful. One memory in particular still brings a tear to my eye and the red hot flush of humiliation to my cheeks. One Saturday, not long after I had given birth to my beautiful daughter, my BFF and her 3 year old invited us for a playdate at a local bookstore. It has a coffee shop and a kids area; the perfect combination. I was all for it. I left the baby with her dad, made sure my son had had one last trip to the potty, and headed out. I should mention that I completely forgot the emergency bag with wipes, Pull Ups, change of clothes, and extra undies. I should also mention that my son was not totally comfortable with the concept of public toilets. I'd like to say that it was because of the idea of putting his hands where someone else's ass had so recently been sitting grossed him out a little (like it does me) but it had more to do with how loud public toilets tend to be when they flush.

Soon after our arrival, my son let me know that he had to go potty. Usually, I was able to get him through a public toilet experience with some encouragement and hand holding but not today. Today he was adamant he was not going to use the public toilet. I explained to him that if he didn't go potty, we'd have to go home. He finally conceded and very quickly, hopped on, dripped a little pee, and hopped off begging me not to flush it. I sent him to stand by the sinks while I flushed, we washed hands, and headed back to the train table. As he and his friend were playing and me and my friend were talking, I saw a familiar look on his face. You know the one, we've all seen it. Perhaps it starts with a look of intense concentration followed by a red nose, or a slight squat and a determined glare.Whatever it looks like, any one who's ever parented a child knows it. It's the poop face. "NNOOOO!!!" I yelled as I reached for his hand to lead him to the potty. We very nearly made it but he did get a little on his undies. No big deal, I thought. He insisted that he did not need to sit on the toilet. Because of the new baby, I hadn't had a normal adult conversation with another woman in quite a few weeks and was desperate for the company so I very stupidly chose to trust my public potty paranoid son, tossed the dirty undies, cleaned him up, and headed back out once again this time with a toddler sans underpants.

Pretty soon the boys were playing again, I was starting to feel like a little of the newborn isolation haze was lifting, and things were looking up. Then once again, that face. This time it was accompanied with a little grunt. "NNOOOO!!!" I yelled again as I reached for his hand but this time it was too late. What was done, was done. And it was done sans underpants. More specifically, it was done in a just a loose pair of khaki shorts sans underpants. I told my friend to text me later and hustled out of there as fast his little legs would move. As we were nearing the exit to the children's section, I thought I saw a brown lump sneak out from his shorts. Can't be, I thought, my mind is playing tricks on me. I felt a rush of blood in my cheeks and tears began to well up in my eyes. Can't be, can't be, can't be, I thought as we continued to rush to the car. In the car, I of course proceeded to have a full on meltdown. Hormonal, exhausted, frustrated, I could see the concerned look on my son's face as we drove home but he didn't say a single word.

Once we got there, I passed him off to my very confused husband and explained what had happened through tears as I watched my husband stifle his laughter for my sake, I heard the text message alert on my phone. No, I thought, it's her. She's going to either confirm or deny what I may or may not have seen as we left the store. Can't be, can't be, can't be.

Oh but it could be. And it was. Not only had I in fact seen what I thought I had seen, someone had stepped in it and some poor store employee was left to clean it up. A part of me wanted to call the store and apologize; to send flowers to the poor store employee, to let them know that had I not had an underpantsless toddler and no back up clothes, I would have been happy to, ok not happy to, but I would have cleaned up the mess myself. The other part of me wanted to start looking at houses on the east coast and move immediately. I didn't call the store and I didn't move and eventually my son got over his fear of public toilets. I did however, avoid that store for many many months and I still consider placing a bag over my head any time I find that I have to go in there.

The thick of it....

I'm in the thick of it. Motherhood that is. I'm tired,  I live in work out clothes or in pajamas, I can't remember when I last washed my hair. I am either frantically trying to get something done (cooking, laundry, grading papers, a work out) or trying not to move so as not to disturb the sleeping baby and/or toddler in my arms. In my daydreams, my kids are older. They sleep through the night, they are potty trained, they don't need me to dress them or bathe them. They don't need me to buckle them into car seats or wipe their runny noses. Forget the empty nest, I'd just like to get passed the stage where diapers are a regular purchase and no one needs rails on their beds. I day dream about getting a massage or wearing pretty clothes. Buying a pair of high heels or spending an entire day in bed watching TV. I day dream about spending quality time with my husband without worrying if my kids are ok or if we've been gone too long. I daydream about sleep.

And then I feel guilty because so often I hear, "Enjoy it, it goes by too fast." Followed by a story about grown kids and the passage of time told by mothers who miss their babies. I know some day I will be that mother too. I will miss the feeling of a baby sleeping on my chest, the sticky hands of a toddler. I will miss tiny feet and seemingly endless energy. I will miss the firsts. First teeth and first steps. First haircuts. First birthdays. First days of pre-school. And countless other firsts that I haven't been privy to yet because as far as motherhood goes, I am still a newcomer to the club. 

But I'm in the thick of it and sometimes I want to scream, "I'm trying!" And I am trying, I really am. But I'm tired, I live in work out clothes or pajamas, I can't remember the last time I washed my hair. This morning I cried because I couldn't find my keys and my son was late to pre-school and the teacher doesn't like it when the kids interrupt circle time. I've rewashed the same load of laundry four times because I keep forgetting I'm supposed to be doing laundry. I smell like spit up because my newborn managed to puke down my shirt and into my bra and I don't have another clean bra that fits me right now. I have baby weight to lose and a husband who most definitely feels neglected but is doing his best to keep his mouth shut about his needs (mostly because he knows how easily I cry and doesn't like to be the cause of my tears). I have a horrible c-section scar on my abdomen that still hasn't healed properly and more stretch marks than smooth skin. The last time I showered I forgot to shave both legs. On top of having a house to run and kids to raise, I have 50 freshmen that are counting on me to get them through their very first English class which means countless emails to return and scoldings to dish out; pats on the back that sometimes require more effort than the "good job!" I throw my toddler's way when he's mastered a new task. I have a boss who more often than not calls when my house is in chaos and one kid is screaming and the other one is singing and a Thomas movie is playing for the nine hundreth time while the dishwasher is going and my phone was hidden under Elmo because "Elmo wanted to play the puzzle game on Mama's phone." 

And then there are those moments when I realize what it is I'm supposed to enjoy. I want to bottle the smell of my daughter's fuzzy hair as she sleeps on my chest. I want to never forget the face that my son makes when he tells me, "I love you so much too, Mama." I want to stop time and keep my two babies in my arms forever. I want to capture the feeling of a sticky little hand in mine and a tiny fist wrapped around my finger. I want to read the bed time stories and kiss the bumped heads and put a Band-Aid on the often imaginary wounds. I want to play trains with my son and watch my sweet baby girl figure out that the if she kicks hard enough, she can get her sock off. I want to look both ways before we cross the street and jump so high off of every curb. I want to laugh with my husband late at night in bed about the silly things our boy says or the funny faces our tiny girl makes.

I want to be totally and completely in the thick of it.

In my quest to not become my mother, I inadvertently became my mother. It finally struck me; 18 weeks pregnant, slippers, 2-year old playing on the floor, fully engaged in tackling the pile of ironing that I have to do every week to keep my husband in his business casual duds. It was like deja vu except instead of me being the kid playing on the floor, I was suddenly my mom. Not the kind of epiphany I wanted to have this early in the morning.

It wasn't the "mom" part that made me not want to be like my mom, it wasn't the cooking, cleaning, ironing; it was the loneliness and isolation. The fact that even though she was unhappy in her marriage for many years, she felt like she had to stick it out because she was uneducated and not prepared to tackle being the bread winner and the homemaker at the same time. I watched all of this unfold as a kid and then later as a teenager. My mom worked her ass of doing any little odd job that she could do from home to help supplement my dad's income. She took in ironing, she watched kids, she baked cakes, she even sometimes cleaned houses. This was her way of contributing. She was also horribly isolated. Back in the late 80s early 90s, there wasn't much support for the stay at home mom. No moms groups to join; no Stroller Strides or MOPS. The way I saw it, they just all trudged through it alone.

My mom's anxiety and unhappiness was often palpable in our house. It caused her to say things to me and my sister that would later shape us our personalities as adults. We knew that she was unhappy. And while my sister, who is 7 years older than I am, was able to rebel and kick and scream to cope, I just spent a lot of time reading and crying and hoping that I would be the kid she wanted me to be and that I could make her happy. This, of course, never happened. Eventually my mom got a job at the school that I went to and a few years after that she decided to go to college and she did graduate earn her bachelor's degree, 2 years after I did in 2007.

As a teenager, neither one of my parents were around much. My dad had never been around much because of his job and my mom had fully committed herself to her career and her studies. And yet I still did everything I could to get her approval. Which turned out to be to my benefit since I was on my own a lot and I never even considered getting in trouble. I just wanted her to be proud of me. So I worked my ass off in school. Took AP classes, participated in every thing I could, I went to conferences, and applied for scholarships and I did a lot of stuff that I probably shouldn't have done too. Don't get me wrong; I was no angel but my adolescent transgressions were few and far between and weren't anything out of the ordinary. I also knew that if I didn't somehow make myself spectacular and go to college, that I would wind up facing the same circumstances that she did.

But still I felt like my mom's past was haunting me. I managed to get out of college unscathed but at 19 I found myself pregnant. My mom having been a teen mom herself, couldn't fathom how this could happen since she had put on the pill at 14 as a way to prevent me from becoming a teen mom. This, of course, didn't go over well. At 19, I also lost my first love to a car accident; my mom went through a divorce at the same age. At 20, I finally accomplished my goal of finishing college. This was enough to make me once and for all decidedly not like my mom, right? Apparently not.

Nine years later, I'm a stay at home mom myself. I'm a wife to a man that works horrifically long hours most of the time and is rarely home. Much like my dad he has a 2 hour commute one way to work. I do what I can to supplement his income by working from home. Instead of taking in ironing and kids, I teach for probably much the same kind of wages my mom earned for her odd jobs. I'm often lonely, though thanks to years of therapy in my early 20s, I'm much better equipped to handle things than my mom was even if it's just reaching out through Facebook or email.

It wasn't all bad growing up; I think it's just sometimes easier to remember the hard stuff. My mom taught us a lot of things that I am really grateful for now. Thanks to my mom, I know how to clean and sew (although I hate sewing). I know how very very important education is; no matter how tight money was, my mom always found ways to buy my books that I so desperately clung to as a kid. I know that because I'm a wife/mother my husband, my kids, and my home are a reflection of me so even though my kid might throw a tantrum in the middle of Target, he's wearing clean clothes and he's bathed and he's probably also throwing a few thank yous and pleases in there.

My mom taught me how to crease pants and iron shirts.

We are expecting our second baby (together) in the spring. A much wanted, planned addition to our blended family that currently consists of my husband's two kids from his previous marriage and our two-year old and yet I'm struggling to find joy. I know, it sounds ridiculous, what's not to be happy about? A blessing we wanted is on it's way and I am having a hard time getting happy about it? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me...I find myself wondering if I'm too old for this. Not chronologically. I realize that 29 is a perfectly appropriate age to be expanding our family but emotionally. Am I too emotionally spent to love and nurture another baby?

This year has been a year of hardship for our family. My marriage crumbling right before my eyes, I didn't think there would be another year of having an in tact family moreless a mutual decision to expand our family. In the back of my mind is the fear that if we could were once so capable of screwing up our marriage that we could very well do it again. Old habits die hard afterall. Worry is exhausting.

There's also guilt. Guilt that I won't be able to care for my son the way I once had. All of my time and effort (for the most part) dedicated to him. Will he be jealous? Will he feel neglected? Will I be doing a disservice to him by giving him a sibling? I've never spent a night away from him. No one else has ever put him to bed. Since my husband was deployed while he was born and during the first six months of his life and we lived apart for another six months, my son is only now starting to know what it's like to have both parents around. For much of his life there was only me and him. And I wasn't always the best mother to him. Dealing with my own turmoil and loneliness, there was a period of time when I just couldn't enjoy being a mother. The burden was too great. The exhaustion too debilitating. I still wonder if he will be sitting on a therapist's couch one day saying, "My mom cried a lot when I was a baby." Logically, I know this is stupid. He was too little to remember and he's absolutely fine. He's independent and stubborn and any time we're out and about someone will remark "What a happy boy!" And my boy is happy. I can't say that I want to go through any of what I went through with the separation and the impending divorce again but I can say that without that experience I wouldn't have had the chance to really stop and listen to God and realize that being a mother is a gift and one I should enjoy. With the very real possibility that I'd have to give up my part-time teaching gig to work full time and leave my son in daycare, I plunged head first into enjoying him when there was very little else I felt joy in. Don't get me wrong, he still drives me crazy sometimes. There are days when I just can't watch another episode of Thomas and Friends or I might pull my hair out if I step on another Goldfish cracker. But these things are apart of motherhood. It's a package deal. You don't get the funny faces and cuddles and milestones without the explosive diarrhea and inexplicable bad moods.

I know, I sound like a hypocrite, if one baby is a blessing then another baby is also a blessing. Trust me, I have considered this. I know that trying to talk myself out of having another baby after I'm already pregnant is ridiculous and I know that my worries are mostly unfounded. My son will be fine. He will enjoy having a sibling. My husband and I are now much better equipped to deal with the challenges of marriage than we were in the past and we will be ok. There's the very real possibility that this is just fear talking and not fear of any of the things I've mentioned. Fear of losing this baby. There are so many things that can possibly go wrong. I mean if you think about it, What To Expect When You're Expecting is just a big long list of things that you can flip out about. Since the pregnancy is still so new and it's still so early, I just don't want to get my hopes up. This has become my MO is the past 10 years or so. Don't get excited and you won't be disappointed when things don't work out. Only the strategy doesn't necessarily work and in the meantime, I lose out on a lot of missed opportunities to be joyful. Logically, I know what I need to do. I need to get up (this can be a challenge since the hungover/exhausted pregnant feeling is quite intense these days) and enjoy the last few months of being a mother of one. Then when the baby comes, all I have to do is enjoy being a mother of two. I don't just want to survive motherhood, I want to enjoy it.

Please, God, help me to find joy today. Help me to appreciate this blessing and know that no matter what happens, it is your will and everything will work out the way you intend it to in your time.