Mother's Day

Motherhood

The day is coming, the one that many women detest, the second Sunday in May.   I look forward to it -- not because I expect to put my feet up and be served breakfast in bed, or to be pampered, or spared toddler-tantrums or diapers or to be worshiped -- but because I feel like the luckiest woman in the world that I get to be a mom.

I'm an old mom by many people's standards, a 42-year-old with a toddler.  Many of my friends have children who are heading to college while I'm just starting.  I hide the tiny strands of silver gray that threaten to call me Grandma and pretend that age is only a number, that I'm really only three and a half dozen.

For years I dreaded the day.  I pitied myself on Sunday morning when all of the mothers of the congregation were asked to stand and receive a flower or a candy bar or some token as to say, "Here is your reward..."  Reward for what?  I wasn't sure; I was too busy (depending on the year) feeling too frightened or too fat or too single or too barren or too much of something that I couldn't even admit -- jealous.  

Two years ago, just before the dreaded Sunday, I received the phone call that would change my life.  Before this, I was certain we would never be picked -- we would be one of those couples whom nobody would pick because we were too old or because we weren't a member of the Beautiful People's Club or because our house was small or because we had dogs or... But that wasn't to be; the voice on the other end of the phone told me we had been selected by a beautiful birth-mother to adopt a baby boy who would be due in a month.

I have to admit that I sat silently on the other end of the phone -- there was no crying or jumping up and down or shouting for joy.  I was just sat for a moment, silently stunned and guarded.  I began to ask questions -- as though suddenly, this stranger who had chosen me to be the adoptive mother of her child must have something incredibly wrong with her -- that I must have been her last resort.  Is she on drugs?  Is she drinking?  Is she eating healthy?  Does she smoke?  I had to make sense of it -- I wanted it so badly and I was afraid someone, anyone, could snatch away my joy before I was ever able to experience it fully. After all, she had chosen us sight unseen.  What if she met us and decided we were horrible awful people who didn't deserve to be parents?  Little did I know that there would later be a bond that would always connect us, almost as if we were blood sisters.

I called my husband, Sean, over and over again.  His phone was off so I kept calling, hoping he'd turn it on so I could share the news.  I didn't want to leave such an important message on voice mail.  When he finally called back I nervously told him, "I have news!"  

"You're pregnant?" he asked?  For a moment I felt barren, like my hard-boiled eggs had let him down once again.  

"No, we've been picked!  We're going to get a baby!"

The following week, we drove across the river to meet our birth-mom for the first time.  I was so scared I thought I might vomit.  I wanted her to like us -- I wanted her to see us for who we really were -- but not all of it.  I didn't want her to know how imperfect we were or she might change her mind.  I brought her a small gift -- a leather bound journal and a really good pen because I had heard she liked to write.  I wanted her to like me.

We met her for the first time in a McDonald's in a really old, rundown industrial section of town.  It was the strangest experience of my life -- as if it were something so casual that we could make such a transaction in a McDonald's.  In reality, it wasn't that way at all.  In reality, it was God that brought us all together that day -- in a very profound and sacred way.

The following Sunday, Mother's Day, I sat with a secret I couldn't contain.  We were going to get a baby!  I let it leak -- I wanted to share my joy with the world.  The reaction wasn't all I had expected it to be.  "I knew a girl," random people would tell me, "whose mother knew my cousin who knew my boss's wife who thought she was going to get a baby, and then the girl backed out at the last minute."  

Why would people share those things with me?  When a newly pregnant woman announced her pregnancy, would I say to her, "You know, my mother was 9 months pregnant and she went to the hospital, fully expecting a live birth but the baby was stillborn and she has never gotten over it and neither has my father.  It was the most horrible experience of their married life."  

But I refused to let anyone steal my joy.  This Mother's Day was something special because I was going to finally be the mother of a baby of my own.  

Tonight, as my almost two-year-old little boy dribbled his very first few drops into his potty seat for the very first time, I felt like the luckiest woman in the entire world for the privilege of getting to clean it when he was done.  I wonder how many other moms feel this way?  Not a day goes by when I don't feel blessed to serve him.  

As the second Sunday in May approaches again, I am grateful for my own mom and for all of her sacrifices and love.  And I am grateful for my mother-in-law for raising such an honorable man.  But most of all, I am grateful for our birth-mom and ALL of the birth-moms who have had the courage to give life!  It's all about love!