This Mothers Day is for them

Mother’s Day, for me, has evolved over the years.  Celebrating this day since I became a Mother 19 years ago has been full of emotions but in a different way every year.  This year I think I might have finally experienced a ripening, if you will, of my attitude toward Motherhood.

I'm not sure exactly why. 

Maybe it has to do with my reuniting with Delaney this last year and the roller coaster that has sent me on that is still in full-swing. How she is all but a grown woman and soon enough she will be moving on to motherhood herself. Maybe its all the pondering on nurture vs nature?.  How do I make her love me? How do you be a Mother when you cant be a Mom?

Maybe its that Braiden is about to turn 15 and he pretty-much is a man.  He just has a little bit of growing and a (lot) bit of learning left to do.    How do I weather that teenage storm and what will I do without him when he is gone?  How do I not be THAT mom?

Maybe its because my sweet Baby Paige is starting to look and act like a young woman.  She is almost 9 and she loves her mommy so much even though sometimes I'm not sure why.    Am I a good enough example for her? Will she be like me when she grows up? 

Maybe its because Cameron started playing soccer this last month and all of the sudden he is strong and confident and wants to be independent.  How did that even happen?  How do I make sure he is okay?  Will he love himself enough?

Maybe its because Max is losing all his baby-ness...and all I want is for him to stay, stay, stay...my baby. How will I cope when he doesn't want to snuggle with me anymore?

Or maybe its because, barring some unplanned, unforeseen failure of modern birth control, I have decided that I am done baring children.  Done.  Finite.  No more.  It may not sound like it, but it makes me so, so sad.  Did I do what I was supposed to do?  Was it enough?

Maybe its because over the last couple years I have learned how to look at my own mother as perfect imperfect human being.  Someone who, like me, struggled through Motherhood, while under totally different circumstances, she did it the best way she knew how...and still...does it the best way she knows how. Someone who, like me, loves her children so much it hurts. How can she possibly know how much I love her in spite of her imperfections and my occasional bouts of frustration with her?

I look at all of my ever-changing offspring daily and can't believe what a special gift was given to me. Sometimes I have no idea what God was thinking.  I haven't always made the best or right choices in Motherhood.  I doubt myself regularly (ie the above italicized questions), make stupid mistakes, miss chances that I will never get again, spend too much time on my computer, tell my self that I am not good enough and compare myself to the illusion of others' perfection.  Why on earth would anyone trust me with these tiny souls??   

Motherhood has made me question every little thing about myself because I want my little (and not so little) souls to look at me, and someday the memory of me, and know that I loved them so much it hurt.   

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"If there is one thing I have learned over the past six years as a mother, it is this:

Motherhood is exquisitely, breathtakingly beautiful.

But it is also overwhelmingly painful.

My heart opened up in ways that I never thought possible the moment that I first laid eyes on my daughter, a squalling bundle of baby limbs on my chest that caused my breath to catch in a way that feels like it will never fully recover. I remember thinking, “Oh, it’s you!” because I felt instinctively that she was someone my heart had always known and would always recognize.

So while becoming a mother has literally transformed my life with its love, it has also brought an unexpected ache.

When I log on to my computer in the morning and see the heartbreak of a mother, her son taken too soon, my heart aches with her pain.

When I sneak in at night just to watch my children’s chests rise and fall in the peace of sleep, my eyes fill with tears with the wish that I could keep them this safe forever.

When I look down at the little hand locked in mine, a perfect trust in me, I want to weep for the knowledge that someday, they will see my imperfections.

When I feel arms wrapped tight around my neck, I pray the fervent prayer of mothers everywhere that their love will never leave me.

When a gentle flutter becomes a kick that keeps me up at night, I rub my belly and wonder how I will safeguard the precious soul entrusted to me against the world outside. Can I do enough? Will I be enough?

Nothing has spliced me open like the rawness of motherhood; a love so fierce I know I would die for it; a heart so big it hurts to carry; a knowledge so immense in realizing that in doing my job well, these little beings who make up my days will venture into the world…without me.

Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful–so very thankful–for all that motherhood has brought into my life. The soon-to-be four little people who brighten my days and draw on my walls; the smiles and laughter that fill my home; the flowers picked too soon that litter my desk.

But what I really want this Mother’s Day might be too much to ask for.

Because who can tell me how it’s possible to live with a heart that loves and breaks at the same time?"

- Chaunie Brusie.  See the full article here. 

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I found this article today and I love the way the author describes how beautiful motherhood is and that the pain that comes with it is equally as exquisite.  The physical, the emotional, spiritual, the psychological... it goes on.  I know the "ache" she mentions.  It can't be described. I felt it the first time I looked in each of their tiny faces and feel it every day as I send them out to be on their own.  It's there when I get frustrated at them for not doing something my way, and it's there when I see them taking pride in their own accomplishments. It's there when I am with all 5 of them...and its there when one of them is missing.  How can I keep them safe?

I just want to hold them and never let them go. I want to turn back time and undo my choices that effected their lives and take away every harsh word I ever said. I don't want the world to lay its filthy hands on them and steal them away to adulthood.  I don't ever want them to feel pain or loneliness and I don't ever want them to figure out that I am not perfect.  

So back to my original comment about my "ripening" into Motherhood... I no longer look at being a Mother as a social expectation or milestone, a right of passage, or an expected part of my gender role anymore.  As my children turn into actual PEOPLE, I see my part in their lives as a piece of who I am.  It's like breathing.  Its no longer a choice, it just is.  I will never go a day or a second without being the one who gave them life...and I will forever ache for them as they leave my arms and take on the world.  All I can do is pray that the love I show them will give them the strength and the confidence to bare everything that comes with life. I made it, and so can they.   

Mothers Day, just like every one of their birthdays, makes me think hard about where my path is leading them.  I want to do the best for them with what I have. I know that won't be perfect but I know that every choice I make will effect them for my whole life.  I have accepted that fact. I will likely continue to doubt myself along the way and make more mistakes.  I guess the truth is that if this were a perfect world, children wouldn't need mothers...and if I were perfect, I wouldn't need them like I do.

Am I the only one who lays awake at night and worries about their babies and asks themselves silly questions with no answers?  I know I'm not because my own Mother warned me it would happen.  I just didn't really believe her until recently.

I am a Mother.  More importantly, I am a Mother to each of my children in a very individual way.  I know that each of them will recall their experience with me differently just as my siblings and I do about our childhoods.  

I celebrate Mothers Day in honor of the tiny souls that made me a Mother and the Mother that showed me how to weather the storm.

And finally...Halloween 2013!

Halloween was quite different this year for us...the number one difference?  It was like 70 degrees here in sunny St. George!  Next time I will remember that Max does NOT require a warm costume.  It reminded me of my Halloweens when I was growing up in California.  Always warm.  This year was also the first that Max was interested in costumes and trick-or-treating which made it quite fun.

Annual pumpkin gutting...ick!  This is Eric's duty. I don't touch raw pumpkin.  It literally makes my stomach turn.  I think its the smell. They turned out quite cute.

With the warm weather, its a tradition here for the kids Halloween parades to take place outside on the play ground.

My office-mates had our own little Halloween party, Super Hero style.  There happened to be 4 Bat Girls.  Great minds think alike (or shop at the same store). Ha!  These ladies know how to party.

Festivities started with a trip to a local car dealership to do a little trunk-or-treat. 

Max and I walked Grandmas somewhat desolate neighborhood and found about 10 houses with people home.  By the 3rd house or so, Max was completely into this knock-on-strangers-doors-and-get-free-candy thing. People were quite generous.

More of October's Randoms...

I have something to share...

This is a post I have been planning for a long time and it has taken me about 2 months to write it and finally decide to post it. I knew the time would come when I would need to share with the "world" or blog land, or Facebook land, or whoever happens to come upon this post a little something personal...I just didn't know it would all happen so soon or when the right time was to go public with it. Many of you know, many of you were there, but many of you might be a little surprised.  Its not something I am ashamed of and its not a secret...I just wasn't ready.  But now I am.  So here it is...

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Last October I got an unexpected, yet long-awaited letter, from someone who was a complete stranger but, in a sense, was my best friend.  I had a faint memory of what she looked like after a really brief meeting some 18 years ago but otherwise knew very little about her. I saw that the return address on the letter was "LDS Family Services" and at that moment I am fairly certain my heart skipped a beat and I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest.   When I opened the letter this picture fell onto my lap and I knew IMMEDIATELY who it was.  My eyes filled with tears.  I might have passed out for a moment, I'm not sure. 

This gorgeous red-head is my daughter.  When I was 17 years old, I gave birth to her in St George, UT and put her up for adoption through LDS Family Services. She went to a couple that I was able to choose when she was 2 days old.  They named her Delaney Anne.  The letter was from her mom, Kim.  I think I read it over and over probably about 50 times and spent the next week or so constructing a perfect response to her.  I learned that Kim had decided to try to get a letter to me without Delaney knowing and thus started, or rekindled I should say, a beautiful friendship.  

Delaney Anne

A little about my experience:  I would never say to anyone that any of this was a cake-walk.  Dealing with the social stigma of being a teenage pregnancy case at 17 and having to use the public health care system because dependent pregnancies were not covered on my parents insurance was slightly traumatizing. After a couple months of pretending that I was okay with the idea of trying to be a mom and a high school senior, it hit me that it wasn't reality. I made the choice to graduate early, leave my friends and the father of my baby in California to go to Utah and live with my grandparents so I could clear my head and make sure that adoption was the right choice.  Sixteen hours of difficult labor, watching the social worker take her away and leaving the hospital empty-handed proved to be the most painful experiences of my life, both physically and emotionally but those following months I managed to get myself back into the swing of life. That and the years that followed made me who I am today.  

It was strange at times, knowing there was a little girl out there somewhere that was half me, and I would regularly give 2nd glances to little red-haired girls that were about her age and wonder in large crowds if she could possibly be there too...but I always knew she was in good hands, I never worried, and I never once regretted my decision.  I also had my family with me every step of the way.  My mom and Grandma were holding my hands when she was born.  I was never alone and still am not.

I spent 2 days in the hospital with her.  Up until I received that letter, this is what she looked like to me.  I still only remembered a newborn although I did receive a few letters and pictures from the family up until her 1st birthday.  I didn't know their names or her name, or where they lived.  I knew she had red hair and was darling and, most importantly, I knew that they wanted her more than anything in the world and that she was and has been a long awaited answer to their prayers.

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After 4 months of getting acquainted with Kim through letters, emails, and then eventually Facebook and texts, sharing laughs and tears and learning all about her and Delaney from afar, sharing pictures and stories and secretly meeting Kim in December,  I was finally able to go to Southern Utah, where they have always lived, and meet Delaney almost 18 years later.  

Let me tell you, I darn near had a panic attack while I was driving up to their house that morning. It was just me and the voice on my GPS.   I decided I needed to do this alone the first time.  I was so nervous yet so excited.  When I saw her, I just hugged her tight and just felt so much love and happiness in that room.  Her mom, step-dad and Grandma were all there and greeted me like they had been missing me for years.  They graciously let me spend the weekend with them and we had a great time, like we were all old friends. 

After the weekend, my face hurt from smiling so much while meeting all the people that I was introduced to as "Amy, Delaney's Birth Mom". She always knew my first name so I learned that the name "Amy" was well-known to many as her birth-mom.  I felt like all these people, who knew Delaney and Kim's story her whole life, knew me just as well.  While they didn't actually know me personally, they knew the entire other side of the story that I never knew about this couple that desperately wanted to have children but were not able to after years of fertility treatments and whose prayers were answered one day when they got the call that they had been chosen by this 17 year old girl to take her baby. I heard over and over that they had always given second glances at any short blonde girl (that would be me) and in large crowds always wondered if I might be there too.  I suppose it never really hit me that while I was wondering about her, she had been wondering about me too...  It was so cool to hear the story about the day they got her.  I had never heard it before and I realized that this was the piece of the entire story that I had been missing all those years.  It gave a much deeper meaning to the entire experience to hear it...to know that I made a difference for them.  It hadn't truly occurred to me before.

Delaney is awesome.  Did I say that already?  She is so spunky, and funny, and amazingly smart and driven. She is a friend to everyone she knows and believe me, she knows ALOT of people.  Its hard to believe she is a teenager.  It has been so fun to identify the things that she and I have in common physically, personality-wise, and so many other ways...you can tell we are related and I see ALOT of her birth-dad in her.  But then again, if one didn't know she was adopted, they would never ask.  She is a puzzle piece that fits perfectly into her family and her home.  I want to be like her when I grow up.

Braiden, my oldest, and now 14 year old son, learned about Delaney shortly after I met her in February.  That was quite an experience, getting him to even believe that I wasn't pulling his chain, but he quickly made his own contact with her through Facebook and they immediately became pals. Whew. That was a dreaded conversation that went surprisingly well and in the end, he has handled it all much better than I imagined.

~This middle picture is the first of all 5 of my children together.  I love it.~

We went to their house for a quick trip in March where the kids and my husband Eric also were able to meet Delaney and her family.  We took that opportunity to tell Paige and Cameron they have an older sister since I thought it would be easier to explain it with her and Kim sitting right there.  That was, and continues to be, a challenge to help their little minds understand how that all works but they have come to accept her as a sister and ask about her regularly. Max even asks where "Way-nee" is.

D has quite the large family.  She certainly hasn't been in isolation these past 18 years.  Because of their family dynamics, she has family for days..5 brothers and sisters, lots of grandparents, lots of crazy aunts and uncles (the best kind) and parents that would move Heaven and Earth for her.  I cant believe how many people there are that love this girl.  Its really amazing and even better when you add in all the biological families.  Wow....what a family reunion that would make.

Since February, or maybe October, my life has been turned upside-down...in a good way mostly.  I have ridden a roller coaster of emotions that nobody could even imagine...except maybe Kim. Before last October, I did not even fathom that I would be meeting her so soon.  I had no idea what to expect because I had always known that I wanted her to come to me when she was ready.  It needed to be her decision and I never wanted to intrude.  I know of many stories where it just never happens for one reason or another. So I had prepared myself for the possibility that I might never meet her, if not much later in life.  What a pleasant surprise.

NEVER, NEVER, did I think I would get to surprise her on her 18th birthday with a visit from her birth-dad or get to see her perform in a choir competition, or see her graduate from high school (below).

Quite certainly I never imagined that we would get to take her with us on a family road trip to California to visit my dad and go to our favorite place (below).  This time has been a blessing without a doubt.  What a fun trip!!  I hope there are more in the future.

So here I am now. The wildness of it all has worn off a bit and we are trying to settle into life with this new "thing".  Its hard.  I'm not gonna lie.  I get sad sometimes and I miss her all the time...maybe its because since her, I have had 4 other babies and I know how I treasure every second with them... so now that I know her and love her even more than I imagined, the reality of it sets in that she isn't mine and I missed so much and that while her family is loving and generous beyond compare, she belongs to them and not me.

-But-

...then I stop myself and think hard about how many people have been blessed by how this has all played out.  While her biological family all missed that little red head baby and wondered about her all this time, her adoptive family has had the opportunity to raise an amazing woman.  She is who she is because of them, no doubt.  While my genes might have determined her hair color, her double-jointed fingers, her shoe size, her smile and maybe a little bit of her demeanor... her heart has been nurtured and taught and loved like I would not have been able to.  Everything is just as it should be...and I'm not sad.  I am overjoyed. I would never claim that these results are typical.  I know that most people in the same situation may have had a completely different outcome.  But that's why I had to share this story.

I plan to nurture my relationship with her while she continues to progress through young woman-hood and hope that we eventually will become close.  She is still really young and has a lot to learn from her own mother but I want to be there for her if she should need me.  I have a lot to look forward to and I am so grateful that my kids will get to know her.  This is so much better than I imagined.

So much better...

Santa 2012

These pics definitely deserve their own post.

I love that FotoFly does these Santa pics.

That is actually Eric dressed as Santa.  What a perfect way to prevent the Santa freak out...and he's just so stinkin cute.

Happy Birthday B!

14 years ago today...I became mom to this awesome kid.

Birthday Sushi!

Happy Birthday B!

October, finally...

I know, I know, its May 2013....but I'm still playing catch up!  I think can, I think I can...

October 2012 Festivities

Punkins...ew.

Punkin farm, complete with scary train ride, stinky animals and super wind-blown hair.

Trick-or-Treat at the offices (these kids do a lot of trick or treating).

And of course trick-or-treat in the hood.  The Eagle Mountain neighborhood was awesome for trick-or-treats...I have never seen so many kids!  ('Super Missionary' is the answer if you were thinking "what the heck is Braiden supposed to be"?)

My faves...

(Like mother like daughter, if the shoe fits....eeeeeeeeeeeee!)

Dressing up for work Halloween Party.  My costume was not nearly as creative as some of these guys but at least I dressed up!

Spring

The first sunny day in April we took a drive to Mount Timpanogos Temple.  It was VERY sunny.  No matter what angle we stood at, it was so bright right there in front of that beautiful white building, we couldn't help be squint.  Not professional pics by any means, but I love them nonetheless.

It amazes me that this was only 7.5 months ago, but my kids all look so much younger.  I cant believe how fast they grow.  It scares me. Stop growing up!

Easter 2012

Lehi Main St Easter Egg Hunt

Decorating Easter Eggs (in a swimsuit, that Paige for ya)

Easter Morning

Easter Egg Hunt at Bonnie's house (with baby Cozy)