Becoming a mother

It happened on a February day,

Nearly ten years ago,

That magical and terrifying year,

The last of the millennium,

My first year as a mother.

 

My world was rocked,

Dragged to hell and back,

Exhaustion and pain.

Eventually I came up for air.

 

I looked down at the tiny pair of brown eyes in my arms,

For they soon turned,

From newborn charcoal-grey to the deepest brown.

And felt like I was sinking,

Sinking, drowning, struggling,

All those things a mother should not feel.

 

And I was unable to see,

Those tiny pair of eyes appraised me, critically.

Was that possible?

Now that I know him better,

I realise it was.

 

The turning point in my life,

The day I became a mother,

Nothing has been the same since.

This life that I brought into the world is a driving force all on its own,

This life is a tour de force, a whirlwind,

He is quick silver,

He is deep,

He is indignant,

He is everything that I am and everything that I am not. Is that possible?

 

The day I became a mother: colder than ice,

The days blurred, I stopped running,

As winter trudged slowly through to spring, so slowly.

 

The Italians said ‘e uno di noi’ and the child chuckled,

And I was afraid.

Fear and dread,

Inexplicable, this was what I had always wanted,

To become a mother,

To link hand in hand with a tiny life force of the future,

Into that unknown terrain.

 

Nearly ten years later he takes my hand,

And I look again into those eyes, glinting, as his father’s do.

I see the man ahead of us,

The child becomes a man, a man of my own making,

Is he a man after my own heart?

 

This is the turning point,

The sum of the parts… produces what?

The future? A mystery?

Someone who will break my heart? Maybe.

 

Someone who will show me the way? I hope so.

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