Clara turned six months old yesterday! I can hardly believe it. She's "halfway to cake," as my dear friend G. said, and it felt like a milestone worth celebrating. Not just for her--and my goodness, what a lot of growing up she's done in just six short months--but also for me. I've been a mother for six months! Amazing.
After Clara's mid-day nap yesterday, I dressed her in a rainbow-striped shirt and pink overalls and strapped her into the carrier across my chest. We took a wonderful long walk around town and I talked to her about all the things we could hear--the birds peeping, the leaves rustling in the breeze, a particularly chatty squirrel. Sometimes I sang to her while we walked. We wound up on campus where we sat on a bench and watched the college students studying or playing frisbee in the warm spring weather. It was the kind of afternoon I used to daydream about before I started trying to have a child. It was the kind of afternoon I couldn't bear to think about when we were in the midst of infertility and miscarriage hell.
She is my miracle. Every day I wake up and know that miracles do happen--they really do happen!--my life has been blessed by one and it will never, ever be the same, because I view the world through the rainbow-tinted prism of a miracle. She is perfection, with all her genes lined up neatly in pairs, with her tiny fingernails, her long eyelashes, her downy hair. The giant grin that overcomes her face in an ecstasy of happiness, the laugh that gurgles out of her because something is funny, just TOO funny! Her eyes light up when she sees me. She buries her head in my neck, in my shoulder. She falls asleep holding my hand.
Motherhood has changed me, and for the better, I think. I make mistakes and I forgive myself. I spend more time looking to the future than dwelling on the past. I am buoyed by a love that is so tremendous and so intense I don't think I'll ever find words to describe it. I thought I knew how much one could love, and then Clara burst into my life. She elevates everything, everything in my world, to a higher level. Love is limitless now. It grows by the day, by the hour, by the minute.
Some days are trying. Some days I am so tired that my body hurts and I want to weep from exhaustion. There's always laundry, always dishes, always a mess that I should attend to. I could work 24 hours a day and still not be caught up. I'm not a perfect mother, not by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't want to pretend that I am, or that it's always easy. In fact, sometimes it's the hardest work I've ever done.
But it's also the most rewarding. And it's the reason why my days begin and end with a simple, whispered thank you. Because I will never forget that my dream came true, and I will never stop being grateful for my miracle.
