Another Look at Motherhood

Eight years ago, a local grocery store held a Mother's Day essay contest. I wrote a short essay and entered it in the contest. I'm pretty sure I was the only one to enter. (I'm not being self-deprecating here. I really think I was the only one. They also did a Mother's Day coloring contest, and that got a lot of entries. But essays, not so much).

Anyway, I won the first prize, which was – get this –  a free haircut. Yep, that's the headline: "Bald Woman Wins Haircut!" Hooray!

Here's the essay. Happy Mother's Day to all. 

When I was a little girl, I looked to the future and saw all the things I might be.  I wanted to be a princess, or a movie star. At the very least, I thought I would grow up to be Barbie. Later, I wanted to be an artist or a writer. I also thought I would be a good advertising executive, even though all I knew about the job was what I’d learned by watching reruns of Bewitched.

What did happen was that I grew up, went to college, got married and started putting my husband through school.  Before long, I had a baby, then another, and another, and before I knew it, I was the mother of seven young children. I loved my children, but I wondered, Is this all there is for me?  I had wanted so much more. I dreamed of the day when my children would be older, when I could do and be some of the things I wanted.

Then one day I got some startling news – I had an aggressive cancer.  Suddenly, the question was not how long I would have children at home but how long they would have me. Facing the fact that I really might not live long made everything that had once been ordinary seem like magic – a drawing from my four-year-old, listening to my daughter practice the violin, a two-year-old’s sticky kisses, the sound of laughter from a over-crowded trampoline. All the things that I had wanted to do, things that had seemed so exciting and important, were now overshadowed by what I finally knew I wanted more than anything else – to be the mother of these children, and if I were fortunate enough, the grandmother of these children’s children.

Armed with a new long-term goal – “I want to live long enough to be the world’s best grandmother” – I began my battle against cancer. My fight is not over, and may not be finished for a long time. But right now, it looks like I might be winning.

Living with cancer has taught me something I should have already known – that life is a precious commodity. There is never enough of it for all we want. I have not completely given up my dreams of doing some of the exciting things I have always wanted to do. (I have given up on ever being Barbie.)  But if time runs out before I do any of those other things, I will know that I have been more, and done more, than I ever thought I would. I have been a mother. I would not ask for more.