What do you want Mother’s Day to be like when you are a mom?

May 7, 2010 | By:

You are probably being inundated with blog posts right now, and articles about how to cope with Mother’s Day while you’re waiting to become a mother.  The last Mother’s Day I spent before I became a mother, I spent it at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Puerto Rico where Charlie took me for the weekend right before our next IVF cycle started.  I spent the weekend doing my Lupron injections and drinking Pina Coladas and beer by the pool (sorry Dr. Chung, I know you said no alcohol!! oops).  Charlie went hiking.  Neither of us was in much mood to deal with the holiday so we escaped.  I got pregnant with twins that IVF cycle and shortly after miscarrying the pregnancy decided to adopt.  What I didn’t know then that I know now is that there is a far more productive means of escaping.  Instead of drowning your sorrows or hiding, visualize how you want Mother’s Day to be when you are a mom.

Charlie keeps asking me what I want to do this Mother’s Day.  I don’t know.  Breakfast in bed brought on a tray by my little boy sounds too cliche.  And the kitchen will just be a disaster that I get to clean up.  Instead, I have been visualizing future mother’s days and trying to create a rich memory for this year.  I am trying to create the perfect Mother’s Day in my head.

I asked for a trip to the gardening store and extra hands in our garden so that I can plant things that grow.  I want to celebrate this year’s Mother’s Day by making the earth rich and fertile and creating life that I can look at outside the kitchen window when I am doing dishes later this summer and be reminded of Mother’s Day.  I am trying to decide what flowers and plants I want to put in.

Mother’s Day has different meanings to all of us.  It is an especially painful holiday when your womb and arms are empty, when your power to reproduce or be a mother is in someone else’s hands.  But you do have power to visualize what it will be like when you are a mother and in so doing, by creating every detail down to the smells and textures, to the exhaustion you will feel at the thought of cleaning up the mother’s day mess in the kitchen, you help speed your way to its manifestation.  Create your future mother’s day and write it down.  Live it in your head.  Don’t for a second doubt it will be real.  The flowers this year are only a start for me.  I need to visualize more Mother’s days, with more babies.  Where will I be then, what flowers will I be planting?

And you know what, as I am writing this, I remember that my first Mother’s Day as a mother, I planted a rose bush in the garden of the house we were renting.  I had made a promise to myself before my very first IVF cycle that I would thank the earth and plant something to remember that time in my life.  I totally forgot about that.  WOW.   Maybe this is my way of celebrating.  But clearly, that promise has been realized.  Yours will be too.  And mine will be again.

So, what does your perfect Mother’s day look like?

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