the power to kill me

I've only just found your blog and while reading through it, I came across 'Deep Thoughts..." It shook my very foundations as I was thrust into memories of when my daughter was around the same age as yours. I remember reciting a mantra; a "keep-your-shit-together-so the-world-can't-see-that-you-don't-love-your-child-enough of sorts. I couldn't understand why everyone around me was so ga-ga over motherhood. I felt I didn't deserve the role of Julia's Mommy because I didn't feel connected to this baby like the competitive mom's in the park were. (Competitve mommying sucks, by the way. A shoutout to you assholes who made me feel worse.)

During these hard to not cry myself to sleep months, a girlfriend of mine went into labor 3 months early, spent every day for a month in the nic ward and ultimately lost her first-born. I couldn't understand why I, who obviously didn't love her child, was allowed to keep my baby while someone who had dreamed only of being a mom was denied that chance. I actually prayed that this deserving woman be spared this pain by inflicting it on me.

Fast forward 6 months; I'm walking with Julia, rather I'm pushing the stroller while she is toddling down the street, because she is, hello, too big to hold my hand and breaks away from me and charges into the street in downtown San Francisco. My heart went into overdrive and I cried out, "STOP, Julia!" with enough fear that passersby were paralyzed by the fear that coursed through my 'unloving' heart. I abandoned the stroller and managed to reach her while still in a parking lane and not in traffic, but nothing could stop the tears and sobbing from escaping. I realized that I loved this being more than my own life and that to lose her had the power to kill me. It took that possibility to show me the limitless fountain of love I held within myself. I also understood that my girlfriend's baby was born into on-coming traffic, she had no chance to take for granted the diapers or the crying and so her vigilance in the hospital was a direct response to the threat of losing her child.

I believe that on a daily basis, we take for granted the fact that we love our children because it rarely reveals itself as a mind numbing, bone crushing, do-whatever-it-takes surge. That if it did, we would never let them experience life and all the scary beauty for fear something bad might happen.