Mother, Not Mother

Sometimes when we're out for a walk in the evening, The Girl will look up at the stars and ask me to tell her again the story about how she is my wishing star baby. And so I tell her, "before you were born, Mommy and Daddy were waiting a very long time for you. We were very sad because we wanted a baby very badly. One night I saw a shooting star, and I wished that I would have a baby. A few weeks later, we found out that you were growing inside me - you were my wish come true!"

The Girl loves this story. But honestly, it's not my favourite. It reminds me of how desperate we were to have children - so desperate that my longing for a baby swam just beneath the surface and emerged at the slightest provocation. Of how frustrated we were that things were not working according to plan. Of how painful the journey to parenthood can be.

Infertility is nasty business. It renders one totally helpless in the face of "natural" processes that refuse to work the way they're supposed to, despite nightly knocking-up of seemingly far-less-deserving teenagers in the backseats of Chevys. It elicits anger against God, the universe, and all other pregnant women proudly displaying their effortless fecundity. It sucks the joy out of sex and reduces miracle to mechanics and spontaneity to obsessive calendar-counting.

Our journey through infertility was short and ultimately ended with a couple of fabulous bio-kids. But not everyone's journey ends that way. Some end after years of waiting helped along with medical intervention. Some end with adoption. Others end with a decision to remain childless. Few end without tears shed along the way.

Those tears make me question the usefulness of a manufactured Hallmark holiday celebrating motherhood. I know of few women whose journeys towards motherhood have not involved copious tears, whether they be over yet another period that dashes the dream that *this* is the month, over the doctor's final diagnosis that biological children will not be in the cards, over the rocky road towards adoption. Or worse, over the graves, whether they be physical ones surrounded by fellow mourners, or unmarked, psychological ones known only to the grieving parents.

And so today, while I'm achingly grateful for the misshapen, glue-covered, clumsy-yet-beautiful works of art that proclaimed "Happy Mother's Day" to me, my heart bleeds for all the mothers around me:

For the mothers whose babies were (or continue to be) long in coming.

For the mothers whose babies were here for far, far too short a time.

For the mothers who never dreamed they'd be raising their babies without a partner.

For the mothers whose babies brought, through no fault of their own, debilitating depression.

For the mothers whose sweet dreams of what motherhood would be like bore so little resemblance to what became difficult reality.

You forgotten mothers are in my thoughts and prayers today. May it be a day of comfort and peace for you; if not possible, then may it be over quickly.