My life changed
Eleven years ago today, my life changed – and I changed – more radically than I could have imagined.
My eldest child was born.
The experience was astounding in its intensity – both the process of giving birth and the love I felt for my son. Nothing could have prepared me for how fiercely I would care for him. Nothing could have described how he would be more important to me than anything else in my life. Shortly afterwards, a friend who was about to have her own first child asked me what it was like to become a mother. I told her that I couldn’t tell her, because we don’t have words for it in our language. Are there words for it any language? I doubt it.
I remember being out with him and sharing little smiles with other mothers with babies – we knew something the women without babies didn’t. We couldn’t describe it, but we knew. We knew that we couldn’t have imagined how much love we’d have for our children. We shared the secret – not a deliberate secret, but a secret because there just isn’t any way to tell it.
Being a mother is the most challenging, and the most rewarding, thing I have ever done, or am ever likely to do.
Today, my son – that baby, in that photo up there! – is 11 years old. As I write this, it’s just hitting me, and my eyes are filling with tears – of joy, of pride, of love. He’s an amazing creature. To watch him and help him grow and develop and mature has been a wonderful privilege.
He’s growing into a young man I can be really proud of. I don’t feel that I had a great deal to do with that, except in that I hope I haven’t screwed up too much; he’s the person he was born to be. But I’m proud of him, all the same. He’s kind and generous, thoughtful and helpful. He’s intelligent and handsome and funny. He’s not quite a teenager, but not really a child anymore either. I expect the next few years will bring more challenges. That’s what parenting is like: you figure out what to do with a child at one stage of development just in time for them to move on to the next.
And it’s all an astonishing journey.
To my son: I love you.
Posts
I felt like I’d joined an amazing exclusive club when I became a mother for the first time
Happy Birthday ‘Barney’!
Clare
x
Happy Birthday! Hope you have a truly fabulous day
Love Jules, Chelsea, Joseph, Tiegan and Callum xx
Beautiful piece of writing, made me feel very awed and a bit envious of those first precious days as they should be when everything is perfect and new. But also really grateful for the ones that have followed and that special time when you first meet.
Happy Birth Day.
11 years… do you get a badge for that? 
A badge? – only if it doesn’t have to be sewn onto a uniform!
Giggle – i think i can arrange that!
Happy Birthday! 11 years is scary isn’t it – I keep wondering where all the time has gone, the grow up so fast!