A Mother's Love in The Day To Day Ramblings

My mom showed up at my house today with a package wrapped in ribbon. She had a sneaky, happy smile on her face and as she walked in the door, she looked almost misty eyed. After our welcome hug and her giving Claire an enthusiastic hello, she held out her arms for me to take the package.

“You don’t know what this is, do you?” She asked, eyes all twinkly.

“No, I have no clue!” I said, laughing.

“To start, this is the ribbon that was wrapped around your wedding bouquet. I’ve kept it these past few years and wasn’t quite sure what to use it for but today I figured it out. It was to wrap this gift. Go ahead. Open it.”

I slowly untie the ribbon, nostalgia already swirling in the air as I remember my wedding day, my dress, my gorgeous flowers and the magic that day held.

As the last of the ribbon fell away, I looked inside the box and saw folders and forms and scraps of newspaper mixed with greeting cards with kid scribble on them and sturdy card stock full of flowing official text. On the very top of the pile sat a small journal.

I looked up, questioningly, at my mom but she just gestured for me to go on. I lifted out the journal and peeked inside the cover. It was the first in a set of journals my mom started while pregnant with me and continued right up until last night, the entries getting more and more sporadic as I got older. This first one held her thoughts as she first found out she was pregnant. They continued on with daily entries through much of her pregnancy and the next book started with a letter to me the night I was born and her thoughts at welcoming a second daughter when she was so sure I was a son.

Then, as the books continued on, there are references to my first steps, my first foods, my first day of school, my struggles, my triumphs, my weeks away at day camp, my applications to colleges, my nursing school graduation day. All this time. All these years. She wrote about it all. I cried without even noticing as the pages of the books slid through my fingers. These books are my life but they are so much of her life as well. They are our life, together, mother and daughter, friends.

Behind the journals lay all of her favorite pieces of my school work over the years. Every single report card I’d ever received - starting with preschool notes from my teachers, going on to my swimming lessons grades and then every single A and B that I got from kindergarten to high school graduation. She saved letters my sister wrote to me during our childhood (“Please come sleep in my bed. I miss you at night when you are in your room.”) and thank you notes my chicken scratch five year old cousins wrote me and little knick knacks and do-dads and sentimental things I don’t even remember being sentimental.

She saved every single essay I wrote for my high school Creative Writing class and all the college entrance essays I wrote trying to sell myself to every nursing program I could find. She had my class itineraries from middle school through my senior year of nursing school and while those things could easily have been tossed, they brought me right back to that stress and that pressure and that satisfaction when the report cards reflected hard work paying off.

Page after page, paper after paper, my life unfolded before my eyes. There were love letters my mom found tucked in jeans pockets thrown in the laundry, ticket stubs from movies that I remember fondly but that she likely doesn’t know about at all and throughout these little trinkets, she’d added small notes. She’d post it noted a few little thoughts “My favorite pictures of you!” or “You learned how to do XYZ this day” or “I was never more proud than watching you walk the stage at nursing school graduation.” Her thoughts that at the time weren’t shared but that now are twice if not even more meaningful. There is even a wall calendar from the first year of my life where she wrote one sentence describing the day in every box for 365 days. She chronicled it all and with my own little one on the way, I’ve never received a more touching gift.

Finally, on the very last pages of the very last journal, she told me I’d find a note she’d written last night. She wanted me to read it alone later, at my leisure, and not feel any pressure to react or respond now. I hugged her and thanked her, both of us wiping tears out of our eyes and saying our ‘I love you’s while faces were squished in the shoulders of the other.

I came back hours later, after my wonderful 28 week ultrasound and after three hours sitting on a Panera sun deck in 80 degree late September sunshine lunching and chatting with my sweet mama and I removed the journal from the box. I took it outside on our wrap around deck to a little nook in the sun that I’d only recently discovered is perfect for reading. I propped my feet up on our red adirondack chairs, cracked open the back pages and lost myself in her words.

She wrote about what an honor it had been to raise me, what joy she had in seeing the world through my eyes, what a surprise I had been and continue to be and how profoundly grateful she was that I continue to take her along on my journey instead of push her away as some daughters do to their mothers. She mentioned that we are not only mother and daughter but that we have become genuine friends, both respecting and trusting each other equally.

One paragraph in her letter struck my heart a little harder than the rest.

I look forward to your becoming a mother. I know our relationship will change and I embrace that change. You are supposed to love your own child more than anyone else. I hope you, too, one day will know the love of a child as I have known for you. There is nothing else like it. Be present. Enjoy the journey. I will forever and always love you. Mom

Slowly, through years of careful saving and sorting and note writing, she is showing me how much she loves me. While I don’t remember many of those sheets of paper or the little girl in the photos or the woman holding her swelling belly as I grew inside, these pieces reflect our journey together that brings us to today. It is almost time for me to start my own journey like this and while I feel a kinship with this little one kicking and bouncing around inside, I know nothing can prepare me for after he or she has arrived. If I thought I was excited to welcome my little one before, this gift and those words she wrote multiplied it many times over.

Last updated September 26, 2014