How does it feel? You know that fluttery feeling you get when you have feelings for someone special? Well, similarly there is a physical sensation that accompanies motherlove, but it isn’t the fluttery sick feeling of that kind of love. It’s more like the pressure of piano keys playing classical compositions in your center as the weight of your sleeping baby rises and falls with your breath. It’s difficult to compare the feeling of mother-love to anything else because it truly is a unique sensation.
One of the most amazing things about mammahood for me so far is the continual wonderment I feel when I realize that my mother felt/feels the same way for me as I do for Hazel. Of course she’s pretty wild about Hazel as well. Most people know their mothers love them, but unless you actually take on that mother role for another child, it is pretty impossible to really understand what that means in the fullest sense.
I look at snugly little Hazel and I think thank God I have a good amount of time before she grows up and her little girl love for mamma moves to the back of her consciousness to make room for that other kind of love that eventually might lead her back to the experience of mamma love for her own child. A dizzying circle of love.
But while mothers are destined to see their children grow up and move out and become independent, no longer needing their mothers and for a time may even resent their mothers, mothers never grow up and out of their love for their children, do they? So how will I survive that distancing when it comes, many years from now? Perhaps I’ll have to ask my own mother about that… Maybe the answer is to hope for grandchildren, because I do admit that having Hazel in my life has opened my eyes to the deep qualities of mother love and fished out of the deep recesses of my consciousness the link to that intimate loving quality my own mother and I shared when I was a wee tot. However, grandchildren can’t be the only answer and so I will also imbed this mantra into my being to help me through any rough times ahead: Only love is real. Only love is real….
Robin
