Mother's Day

On May 30, 1958 I was still a very young and immature 17 year old girl but that's the day I first became a mother...so unprepared for all that the title entails but still filled with the motherly love for my daughter that most mothers experience.  It's such a strong and, at the time, foreign feeling for me that I couldn't have described it then.  To see this precious little baby (not so little at 9 lbs. 8 oz.) and to understand in every fiber of my being that she represented the deep love between me and her father, and yet to draw from me an even deeper love I never knew existed.  I think new mothers are always surprised at how intense motherly love can be.

I've always thought of Kim as our "practice" child because neither her father nor I had any idea what to do with her so she is very lucky she survived such young and inept parents. 

But that strange and wonderful motherly instinct can work wonders.  You see, once you've unleashed a mother's love, she is changed forever.  Her children become the most important reason she'll ever find to explain why she herself was born.  A mother sort of loses her own unique identity because she knows in her heart that her children are by far more important in her life than she is herself.  I suppose it's nature's way of protecting future generations.

I have three daughters that have grown into the very best of human beings so I have to give myself (and my husband) a little pat on the back for birthing and raising them.  In all our inexperience and ineptitude, we must have done something right.  Motherhood is the single most important thing I've accomplished with my life.  Nothing could be more important than that.