The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

and suddenly, I was.

Mother's Day, for me, isn't so much about how the mother is honoured. For me, it truly is about how grateful I am to be a mother. I looked at my girl, so many times today, and realized that she's my daughter, that she is the one person on the planet I would do anything for, that I look at her and see my own love reflected back. It was weird that I was the one being given presents. I feel like everything I could ever want is in the child I gave birth to.

She woke me up, holding her little head, smiling and eager. She had an earache, had been up a couple hours before in tears and had woken M. before the birds were up. He'd given her some medicine, and she's slept for a little bit before waking again to the realization that the day was supposed to be different. 'Happy Mother's Day!' she'd whispered hoarsely, holding a tiny gift bag in her hands, and I knew that she'd been hiding it since last week and that it had been killing her to keep the secret. I sat up, rubbed my eyes and took one of her hands, leading her downstairs. I sat on the couch and I opened the bag while she favoured her right ear with her hand, her eyes fixed on my face, searching for a reaction. She had made me a card, had printed all the words the teacher had instructed her to herself, and there was also a tiny vase full of paper flowers, with a bumblebee affixed to the largest tissue paper bloom. I kissed her repeatedly, thanked her as many times as I kissed her, at which time she let go and began to sob over the pain in her ear. The stoicism she'd shown while she waited for me to open the gift bag as well as how well she'd held it together while I looked at the things she'd made nearly sent me into a fit of tears, but instead I pulled her into my arms and rocked her back and forth. When she wouldn't stop crying, I called the healthline to speak with a nurse, who in turn called the on-call doctor, who advised me to keep administering the same medicine until my doctor's office reopens tomorrow. Luckily, the medicine worked, and she made it through the day with minimal tears and only six short naps.

As they took me to a restaurant last night (a Greek restaurant, I ate way too much feta cheese and tzatziki), tonight I decided I wanted to make wraps. I filled them with turkey, summer sausage, cucumber, tomatoes, red onion, lettuce, avocado and dijon mustard. M. ate about six, and the wee one managed to eat one fourth of her plain turkey and cheddar, before falling asleep on the couch while we sipped oolong tea as we watched a fairly forgettable movie. Earlier in the day, M. had insisted on taking us for ice-cream, despite my protests as I haven't eaten the stuff since last October. Eventually, I'd given in, mostly because my wee one had looked so excited at the prospect of going, so for her I decided to tempt fate. So far, no gall bladder issues, and I have decided to interpret this as a sign that I've corrected the problem. Either the gallstone has passed or it's floating around, unbothered by the soft serve twist I'd guiltily gobbled this afternoon. I deserve ice-cream, I decided. I deserve good things, day for mothers or not. I deserve the love I seek, I deserve paper flowers in vases and I deserve soft serve ice-cream.

It doesn't seem so long ago that Mother's Day was just a day for me to give my mother a plant or a new blouse. In the last couple years before I met M., I used to find myself wondering if I'd ever be a mother. Things had begun to feel as though they were unravelling around me, like nothing in my life made sense, and it didn't seem smart to consider having a baby. I was an anxious mess, bordering on severely depressed, with a man who was as much a child as I ever wanted. I remember sitting in a chair in the corner of the living room one day across from R., just after he found about M., feeling an intense kind of sadness over what I had begun to acknowledge as a fruitless relationship. I was crying in an uncontrollable way, with great, wet heaves and shudders which forced him to focus on what I was saying. I remember taking in a huge breath before exclaiming 'Because of you, I may never be a mother!', and he had taken that statement as though it were a stray bullet.

I had been only thirty-one at the time, but I felt so old, so empty. I didn't know then if M. and I would make it as a couple, and certainly I hadn't seriously considered us becoming parents together, but I was absolutely wrecked over the thirteen years I'd given to someone else who had wanted to have a baby with me, but wouldn't meet me halfway on any of my terms. I'd kept pushing it aside, thinking there was so much time left...and then, time seemed to have run out. We were sitting in that living room, with a broken shutter that he'd thrown a candlestick at, with a gouged coffee table that he'd thrown something else at, with a cracked relationship that didn't seem worth mending.

'Let's just have a baby!', he'd suggested, desperate. 'You want one, let's have one. You'll quit your job, we'll move to the country, you can just be a mom and no one will ever interfere again!'.

And, I cried for our baby that we'd never had, because we'd missed our chance. I cried because I had envisioned that baby so many times before, knew it would have had red hair and dark eyes, that it would have been adored by us both. I cried because I knew that baby would never be. I cried because I hadn't thought seriously about becoming a mother until the possibility seemed to be fading. I shook my head at him sadly, and I cried.

Two years later, I was sitting in the same chair in a different living room, rubbing my big round belly, feeling the strange sensation of something kicking me from within, smiling with the knowledge that I had found my way to motherhood, and that it felt absolutely right.

I never had any doubts, from the second I discovered I was going to be a mother, to this moment now. I have never taken a single moment for granted, never wanted to be away from her, and have genuinely welcomed the woeful 'mommy!' in the middle of the night, because I am so glad that this is who I am now.

I won't say I wouldn't have another baby, because if the conditions were right, I probably would. If I had the financial stability and if M. wanted to do it, I would. I know he worries about his age, that he's too old now for a new baby, and my main concern is that we don't have the money to support another child, and all of that keeps us from letting another pregnancy happen. Sometimes, this saddens me, but mostly I feel like we have to be accountable for making wise decisions. My philosophy is, as it always has been, that things happen when they're meant to. I can't say I'm particularly leaning more toward one side than the other, but I do know that my inability to commit to an opinion on this means I'm still open. I just don't want to do it to myself again, agonize over what isn't or what may never be. I am a mother, and I am in love with my girl, and crying over whether or not a second child is in the future or not will not be productive. Love what is, and be hopeful about the future, is all I can live by.

Today was my kind of perfect. If every Mother's Day was like this one, I'd be happy. No fanfare, no extravagance, just the man I love and the girl we both adore.

I'll probably keep the paper flowers forever.