mother love

"Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible."
  ~Marion C. Garretty, quoted in A Little Spoonful of Chicken Soup for the Mother's Soul

I love mother's day.   I love the breakfast in bed that is delivered with such care and excitement.  

I love homemade paper cards, the sprouting plants they planted, the painted hand-prints and flowers.  I love those sweet smiles and big hugs from my all of little people.  

Mother's day means I am thinking of all the many mothers in my life with gratitude.... with love.  


First my own mother.....her sweet unconditional love.  How she has always supported my dreams, embraced who I am just as I am.  How she has shown me how to love big.


I think of my grandmothers, great-grandmothers....the ones I knew, and the ones I never knew.   I think of their lives, their choices, and how it all led to my life.  


I send my love to the aunts, cousins, friends, sisters....women in my life who are each amazing examples of a mother's love.   I have taken bits of wisdom from each of them.


I feel the love and gratitude I have for Tessa's first mother and the life she brought into the world.  I feel the love I know she carries for this beautiful child we share, whom I am blessed to love. 


I am amazed by these little souls, my children, who bestowed motherhood upon me.  how I love them so much it almost hurts.  how I love them with all of my being.  how I want to protect them from this world and yet teach them about it.   how I desire to keep them close and yet let them grow away from me to be who they are destined to be.   


On mother's day and every day, I an ever certain that raising these children is my purpose in this life, it is my greatest journey, challenge and  mission of love....what I am and will always be most proud of.


And a favorite photo as a mother for this year because I can see in my eyes how much I am wanting Tessa to feel my love, how much I love her and how deeply I needed to connect with her in this past year.   That is what much of this past years journey was about for me emotionally...and here I see it.

              

4 Mother's Day

This Mother's Day was a simple and wonderful day with my little people.  This year I celebrated being a Mom to 4 loves of my life.  Of course, it was also a day of mommy-hood where I was up with Jack who had a raging fever at 3a.m., he finally when back to sleep at 5:00a.m.   Then I could hear Tessa's little sounds as she was up early at 5:15...may as well make a cup of coffee!  Juddy came down and was bummed because I wasn't in bed so he could bring me breakfast in bed.  Instead, he brought me Cheerios to the couch, with a hug and kiss.  Perfect.  We all had the best kind of morning...a lazy one.  That day we made a "lava" science experiment with baking soda an vinegar and went outside to play.  Later the 6 of us all went out to dinner and hit the DQ.  It was normal, relaxing, I was with my little people...perfect.

Last year at this time, I was thinking so much about our daughter and feeling an emptiness in my heart.  Was our daughter born?, was she o.k.?, what was her birth mother going through?, when would we have a referral and bring her home?  It was all still a mystery.  And this year in the early morning hours,  while the house was quite, I embraced Tessa in my arms, snuggled with her for a whole hour.  Felt my gratitude for her presence in our lives.  Felt the gratitude for the gift of motherhood in my life.  Felt the love and gratitude I have for her Ethiopian mother.  As I held Tessa in my arms I felt her little heart beating and breathe on my cheek and sent my love into the universe for Tessa's Ethiopian mother.  That somehow she may feel the love, the security that is surrounding Tessa today and always.

What I love the most about Mother's Day are the wonderful hand-made presents from the kids.  Oh, how I love them!  I will keep each of them forever.  This year Judson gave me a drawing of me surrounded by flowers and had little descriptive terms (which seems appropriate since I recently went crazy planting flowers all around the house)!  He also made a wonderful little paper purse and when you open it you see his handprint with a heart and jewel in the middle representing "the kissing hand".  He also gave me a little painted pot with flowers.

Unbelievably, Drew's presents to me survived being pulled out of his backpack and ripped open by Bob the Bulldog!   Drew made me a clay hand, which now sits by my kitchen window sill and a plastic plate with a drawing of me with flowers and a bit "I Love You Mom".   I am so happy they survived!  I have to share the poem that came with Drew's clay hand...it fills my eyes with happy tears!

This is my gift for Mother's Day,

It is a part of me,

It is my hand filled with love,

For everyone to see.

This is also to remind you,

When I have grown so tall,

That once I was a Kindergartner,

And my hands were very small.

I thank you for your loving ways,

And for the special things you do,

You seem to know about everything,

I'm so very proud of you.

And as I grow up bigger,

I just wanted one more things to say,

You're the best mom ever,

And I love you more and more each day.

Jack was so proud that he too had a gift for me this year.  He made a handprint flower art piece and then a handprint painted flower pot filled with flowers.  He keeps pointing them out to me in the house and outside (where the flowers are).  It is adorable.

There really isn't anything better than the handmade gift.  They fill me up with gratitude and love.  I love being a Mom....and am so grateful to have had my mother who loved me unconditionally.  I have had so many amazing women in my life that have shown me the way...family, friends....you know who you are.  Happy Mother's Day!

my Mom

My heart on Mother's Day

Here Jack is giving us his heart for mother's day.  It is a "bleeding heart" flower from my garden.  And in a way I feel like my heart is bleeding.  It is bleeding with my intense love for my children.  I love them so much it sometimes hurts!  At other times it bleeds with emotion for my sweet girl whom I do not know on this mother's day.  Today my heart bleeds for my sweet girl's birth mother and for the reasons she is not able to care for her our sweet girl.  It bleeds with desire to know and hold my daughter.  It bleeds with love for my daughter in Africa and for the sons I am able to love and cherish each day.  As a mom your heart bleeds....