Still Learning
On one side of me Turtle is laying on my shoulder, her arms around mine. Sunshine is lying on my lap, alternately nursing and teething on me, and she's reaching her little fingers up, trying to put her hand in my mouth, poking her fingers up my nose, pulling my hair. Rosebud is on the other side of me, her feet moving against my thigh, her hand entwined in my hair, stroking it and sucking her thumb.
My skin is crawling. I feel like I am going to burst . . . scream . . . leap up in the air . . . something, anything to get me out. Out from between hot little bodies, out into a that chair over there -- temptingly promising room for only one, away from pokes and fingers and warm breath.
But I don't.
I can't.
Some moments are like this for me. I call it getting "touched out." Sometimes all I want is to not be touched.
Mothering, this vocation full of physicality, is so hard sometimes. I am hard pressed to think of any other life that entails this specific kind of self-sacrifice -- this bodily self-sacrifice. By choosing this life, I have given my body over to my children.
Whether its carrying a child inside, growing it, nourishing it, feeling its caresses and kicks . . . . or birthing a child, the wrenching to one's body, the changes that never go away . . . or nursing a child, or holding a child, or comforting a child, or guiding and teaching and feeding, my literal body is has been given over to this work. This work of growing and birthing and raising children is a work done by my body just as much as my heart, or my mind. My body is not my own.
It's going on 6 years now since I didn't have a little one dependent on my body for nourishment. There are things I don't do for myself because this is true. There are times when my skin crawls at the thought of my body being so needed. Pregnancy is especially hard -- when one is "snuggled on the inside and snuggled on the outside," as a friend once described it.
I can't always spend the time on dress, adornment or grooming the way I would like. I can't or don't normally do things that take time or money away from more pressing needs. And sometimes, because I'm still a woman who wants to look beautiful, despite the snotty-smeared shirt, the grease-stained jeans or the torn nylons, this is really hard.
It's hard to let go. To let go of selfishness, to society's messages about how one should look, to even sometimes let go of one's own valid inner urge of self-preservation to stop the giving and recharge. Being a mother makes me reevaluate what these words mean -- self, other, need, sacrifice. It makes me breach the limits of what I thought my body could do and give and give again.
I know that this life is holy. This physical giving, this bodily vocation is especially akin to that of Christ, who came to give gave over His Body to us.
And I chose this.
Notwithstanding all the sacrifice, maybe because of all the sacrifice, I do want this.
I embrace this life.
I am reminded of this quote:
The most important person on earth is a mother.
She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral.
She need not.
She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral -- a dwelling for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby's body....
The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. They cannot share in God's creative miracle to bring new saints to Heaven.
Only a human mother can. Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other human creature.
God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation....
What on God's earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother.
(Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty)
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