My First Mother's Day is Finally Here

How wonderful it is to write this evening that I am on the verge of celebrating my very first Mother's Day. It still seems like a fantasy at times that I am finally a Mother, that a lifelong wish has been granted. Even with all the depressing moments of late, the one constant in my life is my dear, sweet baby girl. I can sum it up best by using the analogy of being in school and never getting picked for the basketball/volleyball/baseball teams, or at least being one of the last few to make the squad. I always felt like the outsider when in the midst of other mothers who so arrogantly took for granted their easy ascension into Motherhood, as if it were a club membership that either only they could obtain or it was so easy that anyone could have one. Well, now I'm on that team and in that club. It's all the more sweeter for me (and I daresay most other adoptive Mom's like me) because the dues were very costly. Throughout my life I've often felt more like a victim of hazing rather than a card-carrying member of the female populous whom God supposedly created to populate the earth. I yearned to share, to teach, to nurture, to create the adult person who would make the world a better place. Finally, I've been called, picked or chosen for the team and I still can't fully fathom that I've gotten here.

I have so many words swirling in my head as I try and get my thoughts around the ever changing emotions that I feel each day. It is true that I grow more in love with my daughter each day and that I am more and more amazed by her every action, move, smile....everything she does. She greets me almost every morning with a smile and goes to sleep for her naps or bedtime without any fuss. And, in the middle of the night when she awakens with tears, I am a puddle of emotion as the lays her head on my shoulder and wraps her arms around me, fully accepting me as the source of calm and comfort. I love they way she feels in my arms, the way her skin is beyond velvety soft, the way she wrinkles her eyes and nose pretending to hide (in plain site). When we kiss each other, we have a routine where we make an immense (almost screaming) sound like "MMMMMMM-WAHHHHHHHHHHH." Only her and I do it; it's our "thing." Sometimes I think DH gets a little jealous of our closeness, but I constantly remind him that the days when I'm number one in her world are finite, that all too soon she'll convert to 'Daddy's Girl.'

Pumpkin said "hi, Mama" this past weekend and I about hit the floor. She knows the numbers one through five and A, B, C and D. She puts together words like "bye, Moo" more and more frequently and is very clear when telling us what she wants and doesn't want. (She can shake her head with the best of them!)

I don't know what my future holds, whether I'm to be a full-time Mom or a full-time working Mom...that jury continues to be in chambers. I can say for certain that I take great pride in the work I've done thus far with my remarkable child, especially when people comment on her intelligence, personality, or the fact that she so easily says "thank you." Even with my sometimes lack of patience which results in a raised voice now and then, my dear, sweet daughter still knows love. I know this because I can now watch the way she picks up her baby doll and repeatedly kisses it, pats it's back and cuddles it the way I've done her every night for the past six-plus months.

I've done a lot of things in my life that I wish in hindsight I hadn't. I've known love and pain, hope and despair, elation and frustration. My life has always had a course, even if I haven't always known which lane I was to be in. I am a late bloomer, but my life's flowers have smelled just as sweet. I am a daughter, an Aunt, a Sister, a friend, a wife and now, most blessed and revered of all, I am a Mother. It may have taken me 45 years, ten pounds of paperwork, investigations, approvals, finger pricks and finger prints, visa's, passports, police approvals, immigration approvals, references, home inspections and a trip around the artic circle....but the prize at the end of the journey was sweeter than any other I've yet to receive. I've seen the end of the rainbow and my daughter was there to greet me; priceless, perfect and so very, very precious.

Happy Mother's Day to me!