I Am Not The First

When I was in the final weeks of my first pregnancy, I remember looking down at my belly and thinking, "Oh no, this was a mistake."  Not that I didn't want a baby, because I did, but because it suddenly became real to me that the little person rolling around inside, giving me the feeling that an alien was trying to burst out of me, was actually going to have to come out.

First time mother nerves.  Big time.

But I looked around and suddenly had the realization that every single person I saw had a mother.  I was not the first woman to do this whole thing.  That gave me quite a bit of comfort!

As I start planning graduation parties and college preparations and a baby bird leaving the nest, I had that same realization.  I am not the first mother to do this whole thing.  Thinking back to how my own Mom helped me move to California, and left me in a strange city, waiting for my husband to come home from a Coast Guard patrol, and did it all in a such a way that I knew she would miss me but not feel an ache in her soul that her baby was old enough to try flight on  fragile wings, I know that I can do this too.

I will smile and help pack and never let him know that when I look at him these days, all I see is the tiny baby we brought home only yesterday....how did 18 years go by so fast anyway?