Today began as any other Sunday, hard work in the yard, family to see, laundry to do. Maxwell did not apparently care that it was mother's day and this mom wanted to sleep in! So began a morning of toil in the yard with my husband.We have spent the entire weekend with major landscaping activity and what I like to call, "investing in the economy." AKA spending lots of money on my home.
We have created something from nothing. We have transformed our little chunk of the world. Honestly, I almost teared up when we sat down in our lawn chairs and gazed upon the progress that we have made. I so wish that we had taken "before" pictures to compare to the new place that we have made. Flowers, vegetables, green grass, new trees and shrubs. We have lived here 1 year and 3 months and it is not the same place that we bought, it has been changed with love and sweat and all those other cliches (which are totally true, by the way).
I have learned how to garden, from my hard working, meticulous, eager to please husband. All those conversations, the education that we are paying for, hopes and dreams that we have beeen cultivating (no pun intended).... they have paid off big time in the result that I found myself admiring at 8:30 this evening. Matthew and I shared a beer and admired the thing which has kept us close, kept us busy and filled a small part of the void we share, our wonderful, annoying, old as dirt, comfortable home.
I realized after the stress of the last week that I have truly needed an outlet to work out my troubles. Stabbing dirt and coaxing life out of garbage seems to have done the trick. I was left with a Mother's Day epiphany. Get ready for it...
What I have learned from celebrating the mothers in my life on a day when the last thing I feel like doing is acknowledging my own weird place in such a holiday is, that I know how profound and terrifying and gratifying that relationship is. If you participate in that, if you truly understand what it will be like to live with that knowledge; the joy and the fear and the incredible drive that makes you the best version of yourself; it cannot be taken back. Your responsibility, your duty, is to shape your life with that knowledge at the forefront of your thoughts. That is fucking huge...get ready to commit!
It is such a gift. Even without my son to raise, I can look around and see what that eternal love and responsiblity has brought to my life. Besides my grief, I could not name a single thing about being a mother that has not been instrumental in my growth as a person, or an improvement to my life. I am who I am because I know that bond.
