There's this .. Mom secret.
When you're in public and visibly pregnant, complete Mom strangers will approach you and try to explain it.
You nod knowingly, but you don't know, yet.
You believe them.
You anticipate the feeling.
Until you see your baby for the first time, you don't understand what they're trying to tell you.
Simply, it's that you will do anything for your child. Anything.
It's what gets you up in the middle of the night on 2 hours of sleep, it's what makes you suddenly immune to the smell of vomit when they're sick, it's what makes you sternly & repeatedly tell them "No" when they do something fun/funny, but dangerous. It's what - without even thinking - makes you take a flying Larry Bird leap across a room when your baby is perched precariously on the couch. How did she get up there?!
You'll do anything. Consciously or Subconsciously. To keep them safe, to make them happy, to teach them, to show them that you love them.
Last week, I sat quietly sobbing my way through a DVRd episode of The Biggest Loser (am I the only one who cries through the whole thing?), when my very favorite contestant, Moses, said something that almost knocked me off the couch. With regard to always putting his family first, he said - and I'm probably paraphrasing here, b/c I was too blubbery to remember it verbatim -
"To take care of them, I have to take care of me."
It really is that simple.
Being healthy isn't an option, it's a requirement if I am to take the best care of my child and family.
If this is preachy, I've done it for two weeks and it works.
On vacation this week. No scale.
I would like to comment! No truer words were ever spoken: "To take care of them I have to take care of me." It is what propelled me around and around the playground at Gray's Creek Elementary with my class during "recess" and then after school, with my old timey headphones listening to that doctor show on the radio! It's what caused me to quit smoking and walk around in a haze for a week. We ate brown bread, when the rest of the world ate white, and our snacks were apples and other fruit, when we really craved Ho Ho's and Ding Dongs.
ReplyDeleteI love you!