What It Is

This.  This is what it is.  This is what it is to be a single mom.  What it is to have a child with extra needs and challenges.  What it is to be divorced but still entwined with a master covert narcissist.  This is what it is.  It is to be estranged from my eldest son, for whom I share motherhood with a stranger, who is now preparing his own path to parenthood though the timing not ideal.  This life is fraught with sleepless nights, medical appointments, insurance denials, court hearings, mediation, therapies, durable medical equipment, acronyms only understood by walking our path, lonely nights of Netflix, and Pepsi to heal my soul...oh so much Pepsi.  It's compiled of sweet hand squeezes in the night, of Body Sox and compression vests, of educating the educators and advocating for advocacy.  It's watching the eyes of my innocent daughter when the Mean Girls are at the park; mourning the moment they realize her differences but she does not.  It's saying "goodbye" but I'm not ready yet, leaving a bedtime voice-mail in place of a story; it's hearing through the phone about her first lost tooth, and conjuring up tales of Santa's detour to drop presents at two houses.  This life of mine, of ours, does not sparkle like diamonds.  The moments of welcome silence are predictably followed by feelings of loss and emptiness-of something's missing.  Thoughts of our future, once dreamt about with limitless promise, now tell pictures of good enough and tiresome struggle for inclusion.  This-yesterday, today, tomorrow; this is what it is to be alive inside of me.  This life is a luxury of learning patience, compassion, empathy, acceptance, perseverance, true unconditional love at it's fullest.  This is the life I was chosen for.  This path has been worn by mothers before me; single mothers, partnered mothers, weary mothers, mothers who've known grief and loss and trauma, mothers who have learned the definition of love as one could only learn through mothering the broken.  I have mothered the broken.  I am mothering the broken.  I am the broken.  My mother is broken.  My marriage was broken.  My spirit was broken.  I'll leave you to ponder the plausibility that the brokenness is in fact the medicine that heals the broken.  All my love, until next time.

So Long, Sweet Foster...

I will never forget the day, no, the very moment my eyes met your tiny body.  You were inside a clear plastic cradle with the world's tiniest cap on your head.  You had the smallest fingers I had ever seen, and I instantly began to weep at the sight of you.  You would be our new Foster Baby, but I knew-had known from the moment we first learned of your birth, in fact-that you would be our daughter forever.  I was meeting you for the first time and I was already madly in love with you from across the NICU.  I ever-so-gently picked you up and rested your cheek against the skin of my chest.  You and I sat in the rocking chair, your Daddy beside us, and I hummed to you while he touched your toes and imagined our future.  The nurses came to check on us periodically, brought us a bottle for you, allowed us to check your little diaper, asked if we needed anything; but all we needed was to stare at you and soak you in.  We came every single day for the next 9 days, for 3 hours at a time.  The drive was long to see you, but even longer when we had to leave you.  We brought your brother to meet you and hold you.  He fed you a bottle and helped your Daddy change his very first poopy diaper while the nurses giggled to themselves. 

That was 19 very long months ago, Lovey.  In that span of time you have learned to move, talk, laugh, eat, insist, dance, disagree, love, and recently you have even begun to sleep!  Tonight we were informed that you will finally become a legal member of this family within the next few weeks-and I couldn't wait to write and say thank you, my little Shiny, for calling me Momma.  It is the greatest gift I have ever known.

Love,
Momma