Don’t call me mother. Not fit to — The letter kept will remind me.

I have the body of a mother. The belly that has swollen and teamed with life three times, that now furrows over the waist of my not-so-skinny jeans. The breasts that sag like a misfired whoopee cushion. The scar (I imagine) from the 27 stitches that put my womanly bits back together again after the birth of the great conehead.

The fading stretchmarks on my calves from the first-pregnancy Entenmann cheese bun cravings.

I have the heart that melts, the lips that yell when my oldest tries to help but is doing it wrong. I have the eyes that tear-up at the intolerable cuteness, the hands that yank hair when a two-year old cannot stand still for five seconds for ponytails so we can see your pretty eyes.

I have the heartbreak for the baby who never swelled and teemed. The regret for the swearing and the yelling and the times I wished they’d just GO AWAY for two minutes. I have the arms that comfort and the lap that is spreading to accommodate my ever-taller almost-eight-year old.

I have the ears that hear phantom crying and panic whenever the snurgling baby suddenly starts breathing quietly. I have the dry, cracked skin from washing endless milk cups and water cups and juice cups and sippy cups.

I have the feet that stomp on the gas as we rush to be on time for school. I have the nose that cringes from smelling another pair of panties, and the miserly practicallity that cannot even consider JUST WASHING a pair that might be clean.

I have the neck my youngest now considers her personal handwarmer and the patience (laziness) to count to three five times before employing a humane time-out. I have the featherbrain that forgets early-out day at school and the knees that remember to pray with the kids, even when I forget to pray by myself.

I have the hormones that insisted at 22 that I have a baby RIGHT NOW, instead of going to graduate school, and the neural-synapse-thingies to wonder if that was a smart choice.

I have the sing-song voice that can cajole and the imagination to make them want to want what I want them to want. And the impatience often to wish that they’d simply do it because I said so.

I have the hopes and the dreams and the remorse and anxiety and fear and the certainties and the what-ifs and the could-have-beens and thank-God-it’s-nots and the thank-God-it-ises.

I have the wisdom to realize, and gratitude to be thankful, that most of what I am today is shaped by being a mother. And the selfishness to resent that three small beings dictate and describe and delineate me.

And I have the desire of a mother to see my three girls become mothers themselves. Because then they’ll know, and they’ll forgive, and they’ll get what’s coming to them, and they’ll love as fiercely and as imperfectly as I do, and they’ll wish I lived close enough to babysit, but I won’t, because I’ll be on a trip around the world.

Until I come home to smell the baby smell, and cuddle the baby warmth close to my mother’s body, and then hand that baby back at the first sign of action in the lower abdominal region.

Jane

I wrote this as part of the Mother Letter Project. I had mixed thoughts on the MLP, ranging from “gimmick” to “how sweet” to “how come Dick couldn’t think up something like this for me?” And then I read that you could purchase, for the low, low price of FORTY-TWO DOLLARS, your very own WOMB (fabric bag) to hold your copy of the Mother Letter Project, and I barfed a little bit in my mouth, even though I hate that phrase, but that’s really what happened.

Then I remembered when I first became a mother, when we lived in the bottom floor of a little A-frame Archie Bunker house in The Bronx and I had no mother friends (22, remember? in NYC?) and my own mother lived two thousand miles away in Utah. And she asked a couple of her young mother friends to write to me and tell me I’d survive. My mother admitted that she’d been out of the trenches long enough to forget how stinky and deep and dark they are. So these wonderful women emailed me, and I printed out their letters and read and re-read them. And I SURVIVED. (so far). And so will you. (I think).

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