Mother's Day Music

I have five daughters. The first four were fathered by my first husband and I think of them as "the litter." All four were born in just over five years - and it was wonderful! I'm a woman who could have had a very large number of children. I absolutely loved being a mother to young children: the pregnancy, delivery (they were all born at home and I delivered two myself), and nursing, watching them grow, seeing their individual personalities emerge, encouraging their mental development, listening to them at play - you get the drift.

So having them grown and gone far from home is an enormous loss (my fifth daughter came ten years later, so is like an only - and she too lives far from home). We can get together rarely and never have all five been together in one place at one time.

However, this year the oldest four came here for Mother's Day and I have to say that the music of their voices as they interact with one another is the most beautiful sound in the world to this mother. But there's more. I find my eyes just clinging to every detail of their faces, hair, bodies, just as when they were small children. I think mommy love never changes in some ways. And my desire to hold them, sit them on my lap, stroke their skin and all those things that are appropriate when they are small is just as real today as it was then. Maybe mommies always see their children as they were when they were young, I don't know. Not that I don't admire the women they have become. I DO!! It's just something different. Perhaps it's something only a mother could have - those memories of the child to whom she gave birth, whom she suckled, in whom she took such immense pleasure.

I don't know if all people take mental photographs as I do but I certainly love the album I keep in my mind. Just wish I could share it sometimes. I've never been good at taking pictures with a camera and don't have a digital camera, which I would use if I had one but just can't afford one.

I'll savor the mental images and memories of this Mother's Day for a very long time and hope with all my heart it won't be six years (that's the last time we were all together and then for the first time in more than a decade!) before it happens again and that I won't die without having had all five girls together at one time and one place (and not my deathbed, please).

A sidebar to this is my own experience of age. I watch my daughters and see so much of myself at a younger age. I don't have that kind of energy any more even if I do work harder and accomplish more than most people of my age that I know. It's an interesting thing to observe and experience and I find it works best in the context of family and handing off to the next generation. Such a fulfilling experience! I realize in retrospect how different life is for those who live more fully in the bosom of their families on a regular basis. I'm missing quite a lot and I can see how it affects me. Just cause for thought and observation for the introspective one. This is not something you can understand until you get there.

An added feature for me is that I live alone and in complete solitude most days of the year. Very quiet. Nothing but the natural world surrounding me. It is very different to be among so many people, of so many ages, with so much sound. After awhile it is completely exhausting but not in an unpleasant way. Reminds me of the days when I was interfacing with others all the time - a totally different experience. I am grateful to have the quiet time as an older woman because I was always the quiet, reflective, loner sort anyway, although my children were never an intrusion.

Most of all, I am so grateful that I was given this precious experience of being a mother - five times! Absolutely nothing in this life means more to me. Gardening has just been a way to extend the nurturing. I have a full and grateful heart.