Contributing Editor Jenn Satterwhite also blogs at Mommy Needs Coffee and Mommybloggers.
As I was reading some of my regular blogs this morning, I came across an entry that really touched me deeply. Chris at The Big Yellow House was sharing a story of when she took her children to an historic cemetery where most of the graves are from the 1700's to mid 1800's. As she held her child's hand and read the dates on the gravemarkers, she spoke of how she began to feel a kinship of sorts with these people.
As I walked through I found myself overwhelmed. I don't often go to cemeteries... Thinking about the people. Real people, who lived near me, had real lives, loves, and children. And there were so many children who died so young.
It can be overwhelming when you go from looking at the historical aspects of a place such as this and think of the real live people who stood there so long ago and wept over someone they loved. Wept for their own children. Yet, in times when there were so few modern conveniences, these women still went on. They had lives that were tough and extreme and they mourned when they could and lived as they had to live in this place, at that time.
She really made me think about the kinship mothers have with each other simply by the nature of being a mother. How many nights did I walk the floors with a sick baby in my arms feeling all alone when there was a good chance that at that same moment other mothers were also logging in the miles walking their own floors with their own babies feeling these same feelings? Or, more personally, I think about this as I check on my own children at night. When I take the blanket and I cover up their little feet that have kicked free of their covers, I wonder how many times my own Mom did that for me. Or when I silently watch as my children try something new and watch them struggle, how often did my own Mom stand silently and watch me learn to make my own way in this world and figure things out on my own? No matter how much she wanted to jump in and help.
We are bonded together. With modern Moms. With our own Moms. With Moms from hundreds of years ago. We all have that deep love for our children that transcends time or distance. It is universal.
As Chris stood there and read those ancient tombstones, she felt much the same way.
I think of another mother who gave birth, rocked her baby, kissed his fuzzy warm head. I think like a mother who must have rejoiced when her son first began walking, told her a joke, and picked her the heads off of flowers. This is how becoming a mother has changed me. While I didn't like to hear stories of children who were hurt before I had children of my own, now suddenly every child that I hear about who has been murdered, abused, hurt, has the face of one of my children. I am haunted by these kind of stories.
And that therein lies both the beauty and the pain of being a mother.
[image title Mother and Child, c 1900, Mary Cassatt]
