A few months ago, right after I started going back to church on a regular basis, I read this quote on the side of my coffee cup. Let explain that we are very spoiled at our church and we are lucky to have Starbucks coffee on the first Sunday of every month, and if I get there early enough I can get one of their larger cups instead of the classic styrofoam cups. I love my Sunday morning coffee at church, a rare quiet moment in the morning to sit and reflect and drink the whole cup before being pulled in 12 different directions. So, I was enjoying this particular coffee when I read the side of my cup. This was what it said....
"Mother-love us not inevitable. The good mother is a great artist, ever creating beauty out of chaos." -Alice Randall
I have spent a lot of time thinking about those words. They have come to me at a point in my life where I am coming to terms with who I am, how each of the roles I play in my life interact, and the definition I've always had for myself is being rewritten. A huge piece of this is my role as a mother. I think of all of the wonderful women in my life who are have been my models as mothers, my grandmothers, great-grandmothers, my own mom, Aunts, friend's mothers. I think of so many friends who I have watched become new mothers so recently, or are so very close. I find myself paying such close attention to the complexities of motherhood, the intense emotions, and the startling contradictions. I think I would rephrase the beginning of this to say, "Mothering is not inevitable, " or something like that. The point is, being a mother requires work, creativity, determination. The answers aren't always there, and a woman isn't always equipped with everything she needs automatically. We are all taking this chaos and creating beauty out of it, sometimes by the seat of our pants.
It's weird to think that this is my third mother's day, and I'm starting to understand that it isn't what the commercials promise. I didn't receive a huge bouquet of flowers today, or a special piece of jewelry, or even a card. Instead I had a sleepy boy crawling into bed with me at 7:00 this morning, carrying my breakfast to me in bed without dropping it on the floor, a nice cup of coffee at church, and some time to quietly reflect on the immense love I have for that little boy.
