Abundant Love
My husband made me promise to stop watching our kid sleep on the baby monitor because it’s bad for our sleep quality. So after our toddler goes to bed, I look at photos of him. Our kid likes me so much right now, and I want to soak it in while it lasts. When my kid’s at daycare, I miss him. I try to pick him up early from daycare because I can’t wait to see him.
But when he clings to me while I’m cooking for him, squeezing himself between the oven and my legs, lifting his arms like a dancer, leaning on my knees and teetering on his tiptoes so that if I moved away without picking him up he’d fall over, I can’t wait to get him off me. I pay other women to watch him and keep him away from me. Or I hand him to my husband and beg, “Take him, please, just take him.”
Years ago, despite living with my best friends, I couldn’t conceive of having “enough love.” What would that even mean? How could you ever have “enough?” Even with amazing friends to hang out with, and various love interests claiming they’d die without me, I still felt hungry for love. I figured craving endless love was just the nature of the feminine. How could I ever have too many pets, or too many romance novels to read, or too many hot men singing love songs? Of course, there wasn’t enough time in the day, but if there were, I’d never get enough.
Now that I’m a wife and mom, the turntables have turned. Finally, I know what it’s like to have enough love. One might even say, too much love.
With my husband, toddler, and dog, I have so much love I’m sick of it. I have so much love that sometimes I want to fake my death and roll a boulder in front of my tomb. I could finally annihilate by watching mindless movies again, just like when I was single and alone.
But as soon as I close my door, my kid’s footsteps come thumping up. He rattles the door, trying to get to me, clawing with his tiny hands. I harden my heart against him—he’ll forget about me in two seconds—but then my husband barges in because he wants to bring me food and sprawl on the bed and tell me something. And somehow the dog’s there—when did she get in?—staring with her big eyes, waiting for us to remember she needs a walk and is a very good, very old, very good girl.
Even at its most annoying, it’s a blessing. Everything I have now is something I once never even dared to dream of. Sometimes I’m so happy, I scare myself with the idea it won’t last. Then I do laundry to stay grounded, and remind myself that everything is ok. It’s ok to have so much. It’s good. I can celebrate. It’s good to celebrate, together with my family, or alone by hiring sitters so I can work, or shower, or whatever else I want.
Happy Mother’s Day!
If you want to read more, this is from my 1st Mother’s Day as a mom.
I also previously wrote this for my mom on Mother’s Day.
If you want to watch something inspiring for a great cause that makes you cry, watch this moving documentary about a white woman who adopted 51 orphans in Nepal.