Frankly Speaking

Today, I became a mother.

Not in the full-on “A Baby Story” physical sense. But in the real sense. I can honestly say I woke up this morning a woman who was pregnant. And I’m going to bed as somebody’s mom.

It’s been a lousy few months. Needless to say, I’ll think twice before ever publicly announcing being happy again! All joking aside, though, the past weeks have been less fun, more strain, than I ever imagined.

I’ve been poked, proded, and examined. I’ve been ECG’d and non-stress-tested. I’ve been IV’d and ultrasounded. But at the end of the day, all of that – all the emergency room trips and the specialists and the consultations – have been for me.

Until today, when for the first time, it wasn’t me we were rushing to the hospital for. It was for Katie.

Oprah invented the expression of The Aha Moment. It’s a lot like a game-changing moment, the kind you have at the Stanley Cup finals or during a penultimate meeting at work. Well in the car, on the way from my doctor’s office to the hospital, I had mine. The one I’ll always remember. The one when the game changed and the circumstances changed and all I could think was – don’t let it be her. Let it be me.

All of a sudden, all the times my mother must have driven me to the hospital or clinic, bleeding or in tears, came starkly into focus. All the near misses and the sad things and the hard things she must have watched me experience then, and now, came clearly to mind. And I realized what she must have been feeling all along: Let it be me.

There is a helplessness that comes with being a parent. I know that now. There’s only so much you can do, so much you can take care of, so much you can fix. And when none of that works, all there is to do is quietly whisper to yourself, please – just let it be me.

So today, for the first time in my life, that’s what I did. I whispered to the universe, and I whispered to my baby. I asked her to think about the ocean and how calm it would be and how much she’ll like it when she sees it one day. I told her to picture her new room, and all the pretty colours within it. I whispered for minutes, and then for hours, and right up until the time the doctors told me “You know what? It looks like she’s okay.”

That – more than the moment this baby is born, or on any other occasion set to arise in her life, is the moment I went from being just me, to being somebody’s mom.

I can only imagine how much whispering I will do over the decades to come. All I know for sure is that as of today, I’m a mother. And I’ll whisper for as long as there is whispering to be done. Just like my mom still whispers for me, and her mom still whispers for her.

I don’t know much about caring for a baby. But I do know that the kind of whispering I did today is exactly what mothers are for. The rest, I’ll learn as I go.

I used to be organized. Like, really organized. So organized in fact that when the videographer asked one of my bridesmaids why “Kenny was marrying Amanda” she replied “Amanda is super organized”. She even affirmed it by clapping her hands together when she said it (it’s okay Karin, I still love you).

I am not, however, organized anymore. We got a new digital camera that Kenny couldn’t take to the Raptors game today because I can’t remember where I put the charger for sake keeping. I have an entire drawer in our kitchen that I save for things that don’t make sense – including light-bulbs that are likely burned out (Can you recycle this? You don’t know? I’ll put it in the drawer for now…) and a lot of weird Styrofoam things that likely were part of the packaging for our stove. This week, for example, we realized I’ve lost our  medical record books.

I’m just putting that last bit out there so I don’t have to tell my mother in law this story in person. After nearly 30 years of judicious upkeep and careful documentation of all Kenny’s vaccinations, she will be very disappointed to hear that I’ve completely misplaced the booklet. On the upside, I’ve lost mine too (I’m in favour of bi-partisan disorganization). I will think about this tomorrow when we get vaccinated for any number of things in advance of our big vacation – just in case we haven’t already had the shot before, and because we no longer have any real way of knowing one way or the other.

All that said, I don’t really know when I started to slide down this slippery slope to jumbled drawers and misplaced items and lost documentation. In the search, though, for the charger and the books and the reason we are keeping Styrofoam bits in the kitchen – I did discover two important things.

First – a marriage contract I have a feeling I was supposed to file with the government within 21 days of signing. Woops.

Second – and perhaps more importantly (depending on how you think of things) – a new version of myself.

I’ve started to let things go. Not important things (well, okay, medical records could technically be deemed important). But things that don’t really matter. Like the charger to my camera, which is around here somewhere and will be found eventually. Like things that I don’t need clogging up my head-space. Like things – on the bigger, more philosophical scale – that don’t need worrying about right now, or just yet. And that’s quite an improvement in the seven days since my last worry wort style meltdown.

I can’t be everywhere at once. I can’t be everything to everyone. I’m just a person, regular old me. I lose stuff. I kibosh most recipes as soon as I get to an ingredient I’ve never heard of (like quick-rising tapioca – anyone? anyone at all?). I make mistakes. And at the end of the day, I’m okay with all that. And that’s something I really can be happy about. Just as soon as I find my keys.