To My Sweet Sons,
I wonder at the fact that I am a mama at all. Looking back, I cannot believe there was a time when I thought I didn't want to be a mom, that somehow that role was for other women—not for me. I was content, living my life at the time, spending time with your daddy, traveling, going to school, and making do with my not-so-happy-worklife. Life felt full and complete and without that burning ache to become a mommy, I felt it was good to leave well-enough alone.
Then, 11 years into our marriage, something happened. I realized I was aging! There was a realization that if we were going to do the baby thing, it had to be done soon. We went back and forth, back and forth on this monumental decision and within a year, we found out we were pregnant with you, Seth, our first baby. Imagine!
I was still teaching full-time when I was pregnant with you. I felt your first flutter as I stood up to walk over to the filing cabinet in my classroom. I drank countless 7Ups during class to help relieve my nausea. Mrs. Cochran was so kind, and she mothered me, let me lay down on her sofa before school and sent over a rocking chair to my classroom as a proper teacher chair. Mr. Nihi would chuckle every time we had a fire drill and I had to lug my burgeoning belly up and down the stairs and up and down that hill and he would gleefully measure my nose every day. With you, Cody, mama was already home full-time, and you, my sweet one, were the final inspiration for pursing my art and opening my Etsy shop; but that is another story entirely.
I almost passed out 3 or 4 times during my first pregnancy which led to the ever elegant support hose and holter monitor, but the doctors never did find anything significant and the blacking-out thingy disappeared after you were born. Thankfully, the episodes didn't repeat with you, Codes. My pregnancy with you was fairly uneventful, except for the fact that you were 4 days past your due date and I simply could not wait any longer to meet you, so we had you induced.
Upon your arrival, with you Seth, I was deeply depressed and unaware that I was depressed. And you cried so much—those days were so amazingly wonderful and so difficult at the same time; I don't think I could survive them again. Thank God I had your daddy by my side. And with you Cody, oh, you were remarkably mellow. You hardly ever cried. Loved being in your carseat and would look around happily, talk to yourself and then fall asleep all on your own. I had to pick you up just to hold you, since you would never ask for it (oh, how things have changed!!!)
With each of you, I experienced a love so pure and true, so profound that there really aren't words to express the feelings that came with having you. I don't know what I was expecting upon becoming pregnant, becoming a mama, but suffice it to say that it was all a surprise to me. Who knew that carrying a child inside of me would change me from the inside out?! Who could really have prepared me for caring for an infant, so sweet and helpless? How could I have known, really known how heady and difficult and stressful and wondrous motherhood would be, unless I experienced it myself?
And isn't it odd that though we yearn for certain dreams that never come to pass, there are other desires that God fulfills, and even thrusts upon us, that we didn't even know we had…oh, the mystery of it all!
No, I didn't start out wanting you, but then again, I didn't know it would be YOU and YOU. But oh, forgive me my young stupidity. If only I had known how awesome you guys are...in any case, how blessed I am, down to my unpainted toenails to have both of you in my life. My sweaty, lovely, rascally, silly, kolohe, cuddly, smooochable, genius boys. I love you something deep, so inexpressible; I know you will have to become daddies one day to fully grasp the fierceness of it all. Until that unconceivable day, and forevermore, I am,
Your Mama
