I’ve been away again. Somehow I always end up wandering off from this personal space of mine. I suppose that’s what mamas do from time to time. Life is happening so fast. Most days I’m simply keeping up…and yet there’s no keeping up with an infant and a toddler. They’re growing and changing quicker than I can fathom. Almost every night I fall asleep with a mental list of family moments to remember, emails to answer, bills to pay, photos to upload and ideas to write down. But sleep inevitably takes me. As it should at this stage. I’m learning to let motherhood guide my course. I’m taking note of the now as best I can.
Though I should be sleeping, I can’t let January end without writing here just once. I had planned to post on the twenty-eighth, in honor of my mom’s birthday. Her birthday has a way of bringing me back here…back to the creative part of myself. It’s something I know she understood. She would have been seventy-two this year. Hard to imagine since she always seemed so young. In my mind, she hovers somewhere around forty, and yet I’m forty now.
My plan to post on the twenty-eighth was sidetracked, but for good reason. This week my daughter came down with a cold. “Mommy, I want you to make me feel better,” she said. Her little voice took me back to my own childhood, back to a time when my mom could make everything better. When I felt sick, a cup of ginger ale and the twinkle in her eye worked wonders somehow. Now I’m the mommy. I keep having to remind myself of that. So often I feel like I’m doing it wrong. I feel like I’m not capable of being as good a mommy as my mom was, probably because part of me is still a little girl inside. But I’m here, and I’m doing it. I helped my daughter put on her leotard with the pink skirt and her fuzzy polka-dotted slippers and we sat on the kitchen floor eating graham crackers together. Her nose was still stuffy afterwards, but on some level I know she felt better. So did I.