Mothers……Mothers of everything and everyone. None of us have a handbook with those first babies and of course neither do dads! There are of course all the published works about parenting since time immemorial. None of those works show us what motherhood really is. Motherhood begins with a pregnancy. Birth brings both relief (to have your body back) and joy to see that tiny face with ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes. If all is not in place, according to our vision of the perfect child, the feelings can be very different. The challenges greater, the belief in that new life is more important. And then the child grows. And grows. And grows. Out of everything. Sometimes before a garment even shows signs of wear. On the inside is when motherhood becomes something different. The wear that our children experience does not require knee patches or new socks. It requires patience and understanding. Things that, as mothers, we don’t always have in abundance on the days when our own hearts are worn and scarred. Our grandmothers, aunties and role models have shown us, for good or ill, how and what to do for those places of life’s wear and tear. As our children grow and become parents and grandparents, our love grows and motherhood ~ parenting ~ grows along with them. All the hard-copy books? They can never prepare us fully for this delicate transition.
“Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child.
They get bigger, older, but grown, In my heart it don’t mean a thing.”
~ Toni Morrison
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