Anyway back to the entry at hand...still hear with a little time on my hand and I started thinking of when Ken was an infant and how I changed so much. How many lessons I learn in the blink of an eye.
Today I want to share one of the most important lessons:
During the first few weeks after her birth, my mother joked that, finally, it was "payback time". "Now you'll feel what it's like to have a daughter like you," she joked. It was like she found joy in the fact that I would soon get a taste of my own medicine.
What is odd is the fact that when I am thinking back now, I would call Bonnie Goods a "cool mom." She planned sleep overs, took me and my friends to concerts, drive me past the house of the boy I liked in high school, and, after I moved away from home, spend hours thumbing through discount racks to send me clothes that always fit perfectly. And she stills sends the greatest care packages to not only me, but to my husband and the kids as well. Just the other month , when yet another package arrived at my house, my neighbor & friend commented, "You are so lucky!"
But during those times, I never treated my mother as if I considered myself particularly lucky. I treated her as if this was just the way it was, as if this was what mothers were supposed to do for their daughters. I was grateful, but never overly so. Never enough to tame myself from sniping at her when she kept talking after I told her I had to get off the phone, or when she asked me for the sixth time when I was coming home for Christmas, or when she dared to mention that I might want to paint the trim on the pedestrian door at my house. ("Like I have time!") Never enough to spontaneously hug her the next time I saw her. Never enough to tell her I loved her without being prompted by her saying it first. This, I know, is what she meant by "payback." This is what I have to look forward to now that I have a daughter--not being appreciated, not being respected, not being understood. :-(
I remember when Ken, my daughter started doing the sweetest thing as a toddler... She would run through the house looking for me, yelling "mommmmmy! mommmmmy! mommmmmy!" as if she's not only figured out what the lottery was but discovered she'd won it; then when she found me, she came toward me until she crashed into my legs and wrapped her little arms around my knees, squeezing with far more might than a toddler should have.
Then she discovered the word "love" something she had always shown me with her actions and her expression. But the first time I heard her say it, I thought my heart would explode. Love - the emotion that's so primal, so uncontrollable that it propelled her to hunt me down ( and she still does that at 4) and causes every cell in my body to vibrate as if I am about to burst into flames. "I love you too," I say, except I love her more, infinitely. My love for her has become the fuel that keeps me alive.
This, I know now, is the real payback that my mom spoke of shortly after her birth. That feeling, that freedom, that capacity to love another person more than I love myself, because this little girl is the most important thing I have ever done (along with Brycen). I would do anything--anything--to make sure she always feels safe, happy and loved.
I fear that, too soon, my daughter will become the daughter I was. She'll stop calling for mommmmmy! She'll forget, grow up. She'll yell at me and hate me. And I will, in turn, become my mother, suffering through decades of praying for my daughter to have a child of her own. Only then will she comprehend how much I love her and how very long I waited for her to know.
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