Friday was a momentous occasion. (Drumroll, please..) My little tyke turned 11.. can you believe that? It seems as though it was just yesterday that I was cradling him and complaining he was just sooooo heavy — and yet I couldn’t get enough of kissing him and breathing the air he breathed out. Everything in my life was colored by his arrival. It was love at first sight, and I’m still falling in love with him every day. (Even when he starts rejecting me for a selfie… or when he starts giving me the look telling me he’s upset at Mom for being a mom.. )
Has it been THAT long? I look at his frame and see him literally growing up. He will soon be as tall and then taller than me. His voice has always been low, but even that will become deeper. I hold his hands in mine and I can’t help but notice how his grasp is filling up my hand even more as the days go by, those times that he STILL lets me hold his hand in mine.
It seems like it was only yesterday that he could hardly speak, but he would cling to me with a sense of urgency that made me feel like he was a literal extension of me. And he started speaking and I heard those three magic words that made everything else matter so little. As the years passed by, his presence remained constant and kept me anchored to the ground through the worst times and kept me tethered to my humility those times when I was just feeling over the moon. Through the worst and the best, he was the one whose love mattered the most.
These days I would grab him and hug him as if it were the last time I was going to hold him — remembering that in my lowest of lows, it was his love that kept me going.
Mother’s Day has never been the same for me each year since he was born. While I had always celebrated it as a daughter, it has taken on a new meaning since I started celebrating it as a mother myself. Although the day’s focus should be the mother, it plays around motherhood in my eyes.
Today I celebrate it because I hold the heart of my son in my hands and I know it beats a fierce devotion and a tender love that keeps growing each day. Motherhood, challenging though it may be, is its own reward. In my heart I know I have done well. I may not have the riches others possess, but I own something far more priceless. I look at my son and I am rich beyond measure. He is the reason today is, indeed, a happy Mother’s Day.
Pinay New Yorker 