THIS isn't hard...
By: Nancy Kramer
Mother’s Day May 11, 2014
I awoke to the baby crying. She’s up in the attic, or the unfinished room we’ll someday turn into a third bedroom in our house when we have the funds and the creative motivation. For now, however, it’s an attic-like space filled with boxes and miscellaneous items that accumulate over time in one closet or room of most family homes over time. She’s dressed in a warm blanket sleeper and snuggles cozily in her little bassinet. She’s almost six months old and normally still wakes up at least once in the night to nurse. I ask Daniel what time it is… He fumbles around in the darkness to reach for his phone…
“3:30.”
I throw the warm blankets off and stand up to make the routine walk down the hallway and up the cold tile stairs.
“Sorry, Nanna… I know it can be hard. Happy Mother’s Day.”
I had been awake a few times already in the night, twice to get icepacks for my husband who is recovering from a recent vasectomy and another time to comfort my five-year old boy who broke his leg last week and couldn’t sleep because he needed an extra kiss.
“This isn’t hard, Daniel…” were the words that came out of my mouth in my groggy half sleep, almost as though they were someone else’s words.
As I climbed the stairs, the baby crying more dramatically as she heard my steps, the words kept echoing in my head… THIS isn’t hard.
I reached down to pick up my soft little baby as she frantically bobbed and darted her head, ravenously ready to nurse, the way infants do… as though they haven’t had food in a week. I sat down and wrapped up in a warm soft blanket and snuggled down for the next half hour with the words repeating in my head.
No, this isn’t hard, I told myself. This house is warm. This house is safe. I am not hiding the cries of my baby from Nazis or sheltering her from enemy shrapnel in the cold night. I catch the site of the bright yellow moon just as it is setting. I feel the gravity of my body which keeps me from floating into the great universe. I feel the let down of my milk flow from my healthy body into the tummy of my baby… who is alive and warm in my arms. I am not skin and bones trying to keep alive a starving baby whose eyes are glazed over and covered with flies. I am not waiting for her to wake up in the NICU or the pediatric oncology department.
…”Nanna…. Would you please bring me some more ice…”
I have the privilege of electricity to cool ice packs. I have been blessed with the ability to control our own family planning through modern birth control procedures done in a clean hospital, the same hospital which, one week prior, sent our son home in a bright red leg cast and medication to control his pain after fracturing his tibia. I am not under the oppressive force of a culture to procreate or the physical will of a violent husband. I have the privilege of choice to have had these three beautiful healthy children.
I have been blessed with fertility, I have been blessed with a loving soul mate, I have been blessed by circumstance and time.
As I look down at my sweet nursing baby girl, my last precious baby, I know this may be my final Mother’s Day ever… to nurse in the middle of the night. I am reminded of how lucky I am to be a mother on this day… of what a privilege I have to be a mother of these children, in these times, in this place on earth, in this moment. I feel grateful on this Mother’s Day. I am grateful for being alive. I am grateful for this life. I am grateful for MY MOTHER... for without her, I would have nothing.
